{"id":"01KG6YH31ZQX8KR5CW5CVWR9CH","cid":"bafkreid3vogex45mfird5vmbqamdgcjb4bkikeovhi5fnpwi3fsnrpy4ja","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":4422,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T07:57:45.581Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG6YDD8GKW0DRD5H2MY1NRZ7","start_line":4368,"text":"and her groom, and an innocent little infant, were all disembarked\r\ninto the grim hulk of Charon, who ferried them over, all baggageless,\r\nto some clinkered iron-foundry country or other. Yet what's the use\r\nof complaining? What justice of the peace will right this matter?\r\nYea, what's the use of bothering the very heavens about it? Don't the\r\nheavens themselves ordain these things--else they could not happen?\r\n\r\nA miserable world! Who would take the trouble to make a fortune in it,\r\nwhen he knows not how long he can keep it, for the thousand villains\r\nand asses who have the management of railroads and steamboats, and\r\ninnumerable other vital things in the world. If they would make me\r\nDictator in North America awhile I'd string them up! and hang, draw,\r\nand quarter; fry, roast and boil; stew, grill, and devil them like so\r\nmany turkey-legs--the rascally numskulls of stokers; I'd set them to\r\nstokering in Tartarus--I would!\r\n\r\nGreat improvements of the age! What! to call the facilitation of death\r\nand murder an improvement! Who wants to travel so fast? My grandfather\r\ndid not, and he was no fool. Hark! here comes that old dragon\r\nagain--that gigantic gadfly of a Moloch--snort! puff! scream!--here\r\nhe comes straight-bent through these vernal woods, like the Asiatic\r\ncholera cantering on a camel. Stand aside! Here he comes, the chartered\r\nmurderer! the death monopolizer! judge, jury, and hangman all together,\r\nwhose victims die always without benefit of clergy. For two hundred\r\nand fifty miles that iron fiend goes yelling through the land, crying\r\n\"More! more! more!\" Would fifty conspiring mountains fall atop of him!\r\nand, while they were about it, would they would also fall atop of that\r\nsmaller dunning fiend, my creditor, who frightens the life out of me\r\nmore than any locomotive--a lantern-jawed rascal, who seems to run on a\r\nrailroad track too, and duns me even on Sunday, all the way to church\r\nand back, and comes and sits in the same pew with me, and pretending to\r\nbe polite and hand me the prayer-book opened at the proper place, pokes\r\nhis pesky bill under my nose in the very midst of my devotions, and\r\nso shoves himself between me and salvation; for how can one keep his\r\ntemper on such occasions?\r\n\r\nI can't pay this horrid man; and yet they say money was never so\r\nplentiful--a drug on the market; but blame me if I can get any of the\r\ndrug, though there never was a sick man more in need of that particular\r\nsort of medicine. It's a lie; money ain't plenty--feel of my pocket.\r\nHa! here's a powder I was going to send to the sick baby in yonder\r\nhovel, where the Irish ditcher lives. That baby has the scarlet fever.\r\nThey say the measles are rife in the country too, and the varioloid,\r\nand the chicken-pox, and it's bad for teething children. And after all,\r\nI suppose many of the poor little ones, after going through all this\r\ntrouble snap off short; and so they had the measles, mumps, croup,\r\nscarlet-fever, chicken-pox, cholera-morbus, summer-complaint, and all\r\nelse, in vain! Ah! there's that twinge of the rheumatics in my right\r\nshoulder. I got it one night on the North River, when, in a crowded\r\nboat, I gave up my berth to a sick lady, and staid on deck till morning\r\nin drizzling weather. There's the thanks one gets for charity! Twinge!\r\nShoot away, ye rheumatics! Ye couldn't lay on worse if I were some\r\nvillain who had murdered the lady instead of befriending her. Dyspepsia\r\ntoo--I am troubled with that.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6YGBGP65WA6068YJZCVSW9","peer_type":"segment","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6YDD8GKW0DRD5H2MY1NRZ7","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG6YCG626JN4FCG8QK17CQCF","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6YH2EHPRQV8HHCVBBQBKQW","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG6YH31ZB1AGQB4B0RF9XZPN","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T07:57:50.015Z","ts":"2026-01-30T07:57:55.097Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}