A Woman's Life-Work — Labors and Experiences of Laura S. HavilandHaviland, Laura S. (Laura Smith)
Religion
A Woman's Life-Work — Labors and Experiences of Laura S. Haviland
Haviland, Laura S. (Laura Smith)
Freed persons; Haviland, Laura S. (Laura Smith), 1808-1898; Underground Railroad
"Yes, yes," said the doctor, "I'll come; don't leave your father a
moment;" and jumped up, apparently in great excitement. But at the door
he halted to tell me that these spasms indicated mortification, when
the son-in-law again opened the door with a bang and the exclamation:
"Doctor, why don't you hurry? Father is vomiting again, and I'm afraid
he is dying."
At this they both rushed frantically up-stairs. In about fifteen
minutes the doctor returned, saying he had given his patient a double
dose of an opiate, and would let him rest awhile. He then launched out
into a description of his treatment of Mr. Bayliss; how he had
blistered him, and performed a surgical operation on him which had
given him great pain; said he was attending him to the neglect of his
other patients, and after exhausting a large amount of eloquence on the
subject returned to the sick chamber. In a few moments he came back
with the information that I could now be admitted, and conducted me to
the room.
As soon as we stepped within the door the doctor halted, but I stepped
to the center of the room, as if I had forgotten that I was only just
to enter, and gazed at the bed and then at the lounge opposite. The
doctor stepped to my side and said, "That is he on the bed yonder." I
stood a moment and took a mental inventory of the sick man, who
appeared full six feet tall and very slender, not at all answering to
the description of the short, heavily built John Bayliss, of two
hundred pounds avoirdupois. Of course, a fit of sickness might reduce a
man's flesh, but it did not appear to me as especially likely to
increase his height. As his face was covered with wet cloths I could
not see the round physiognomy of John Bayliss, but passing my hand over
the face I found it long and thin featured. I whispered to the doctor
that I would like to notice his pulse. He said I could do so on the
jugular vein. I did so, and found the skin of this fever-stricken man
to be the natural temperature, but I whispered to the doctor that I was
not so accustomed to noticing the pulse in that locality as at the
wrist. After some resistance by the sick man, who finally yielded with
a long undertone groan, I found his wrist, and the full, strong,
regular pulse of a well man. There was now no doubt in my mind that I
was alone at this midnight hour, far from home, in a room with three
slaveholders.
As I stepped from the bed the doctor asked me if I was satisfied. The
thought flashed through my mind that I had always contended that
deception was lying, and that no circumstances could justify it But
other thoughts also came, and I replied that I was satisfied.
At this the son-in-law, who had apparently been sleeping on the lounge,
roused himself and commenced rubbing his eyes, and looking at the
doctor, said, "Oh, doctor, do you think father is any better?"
"I can not conscientiously give you any hope," replied the doctor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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