भारतीय इतिहास के ६ स्वर्णिम पृष्ठ (वीर सावरकर - विदेशी आक्रान्ताओं पर विजय गाथा)

speak with my brother? No! Being exempted from the compulsory and hard labour? No! Being promoted to be a warder or cease to be locked up in the cell? No! Better and hospitable treatment? No! More letters? No! Any visits from home?—others get it after five years and I am in the 8th—No! Then if you still ask what advantages in being promoted to 2nd class—well the great one-that of being promoted to the second class!! Do you understand, Doctor? So far as to the advantages in the jail: but all this was bearable to me when my health was comparatively sound. But this year, I must tell you that great and counting disadvantage has been added to my lot, for my health is utterly broken. You know I could not have used such language but I feel it my bounden duty to do so. Confident am I that a student of Geeta and my own brother would not be shaken under any calamities that the blind dame may bring to us in her usual rounds and would stand squarely firm facing all winds as they last. Brother! each year, one day which was joy unalloyed— that was the day of writing the letter Home. This year even that is a partial joy, for though I am writing to you to the immense delight of memory—all the pleasant scenes and dear faces and grateful remembrances being made alive—yet am feeling the strain of penning even such a letter as this! The flesh complains and I could not go on without a rest! Last year March, I weighed 119—this year, I weigh 98! They take the weight with which we come here as the normal one; that is a wrong test for we come here after rotting for years in the jails and custodies there. But even when I came here, I was 111 lbs. Chronic dysentery due to disregard of the medical treatment in the beginning has reduced me to a skeleton. Eight years I bore the burden well. Innumerable and unknown hardships taxed my mettal and an atmosphere of frowns and threats and sighs of demoralising and disheartening stench tried to stifle the noble breath of Life—but God gave me strength to stand and stand firm, and face it all for these eight years or so. But now I feel the flesh has received wounds that are hard to heal and is day by day pining away. Recently, the Medical Superintendent has been paying a little special attention to my weakness and though I am still on ‘duty’, i.e. work and not in the hospital, yet I get hospital diet that is better cooked, and eat only rice and am allowed milk and bread at present. It is better a bit and hope it may improve. But what is likely is that this constant debility may end in some fatal malady or that inevitable friend so well known in jails, specially in Andamans—the Pthysis. Only one thing and one