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“Is not all human life a struggle?
    Our lives are like that of a hired hand,
like a worker who longs for the shade,
    like a servant waiting to be paid.
I, too, have been assigned months of futility,
    long and weary nights of misery.
Lying in bed, I think, ‘When will it be morning?’
    But the night drags on, and I toss till dawn.
My body is covered with maggots and scabs.
    My skin breaks open, oozing with pus.

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“How mankind must struggle. A man’s life is long and hard, like that of a slave. How he longs for the day to end. How he grinds on to the end of the week and his wages. And so to me also have been allotted months of frustration, these long and weary nights. When I go to bed I think, ‘Oh, that it were morning,’ and then I toss till dawn.

“My skin is filled with worms and blackness. My flesh breaks open, full of pus.

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