| |
 |
Your name will be mud 声名扫地
|
Time and again, one may be warned, "Your name will be mud." Many have used the expression in the mistaken belief that it has something to do with the kind of dirt found in the streets or on unclean river bottoms. But the expression comes from the name of Doctor Samuel Alexander Mudd, a physician who fixed the broken leg of John Wilkes Booth, the man who killed President Abraham Lincoln.
On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln was watching a play in a Washington theatre. John Wilkes Booth sneaked into Lincoln's private seating box and shot him in the back of the head. Then he jumped to the stage a few metres below, breaking a bone in his leg. He needed a doctor to treat his injury.
Booth finally reached the home of Doctor Samuel Alexander Mudd. The doctor treated Booth's injured leg without knowing who he was.
Booth was later captured by Union soldiers. He was shot and died soon after.
Doctor Mudd had nothing to do with Lincoln's murder. All the evidence seems to show that he was an innocent man. But he had given aid to the man who shot Lincoln. This in itself was a crime. And so, Doctor Mudd was tried as one of the conspirators and sentenced to life imprisonment.
In jail, Doctor Mudd saved many prisoners and guards in a yellow fever outbreak. President Andrew Johnson pardoned him in 1869, after the doctor had spent almost four years in prison.
Doctor Mudd was freed, but people never forgave him. His name passed into American folk speech as something bad, hateful.
The Mudd family also suffered because of the name. No one knows how many descendants changed their name because of the trouble it brought them.
|
|
|
|
