I saw her no more for ten or twelve years. Occasionally, it is true, I heard from her, that she was better. Yet she was never entirely well. She was never entirely beyond the circle in which she had so long moved. She returned, at times, to medical advice and medicine; but, so far as I could learn, with little permanent good effect. She died about twelve years after she left my "guardianship," an extreme sufferer, as she had lived; and a sufferer from causes that a correct education and just views of social life, and of health and disease, would, for the most part, have prevented. CHAPTER LXV. POISONING WITH MAPLE SUGAR. A particular friend of mine purchased one day, at a stand in the city, two small cakes of maple sugar. It was early in the spring, and very little of the article had as yet been manufactured. My friend, in his eagerness, devoured them immediately. He observed, before eating them, that they had a very dark appearance; but the taste was correct, as far as he could judge, and he did not hesitate. He was one of those individuals, moreover, who are not greatly given to self-denial in the matter of appetite. The next day he had as sore a mouth as I ever saw. The inflammation extended not only to the back part of the mouth, but into the throat, and probably quite into the stomach, and was attended with a most distressing thirst, with loss of appetite, and occasional nausea. In short, it unfitted him for business the whole day; indeed it was many days before he recovered entirely. My own conclusion, after a careful investigation of the facts, was, that the sugar was cooled down in vessels of iron, which were, in some way, more or less oxydated or rusted, and that a small quantity of free acid having been, by some means unknown, developed in the sugar, it entered into a chemical combination with the metallic oxyde, to form a species of copperas--perhaps the genuine sulphate of iron itself. No medicine was given, nor was any needed. It was sufficient to let the system rest, till Nature, with the assistance of small quantities of water,--such as she was constantly demanding,--could eject the intruding foe. It required only a little patient waiting. There is scarcely a doubt that the sufferer learned, from his experiment, one important lesson; viz., to let alone every thing which, by cooking, has been changed to a dark color. Beets are sometimes blackened by cooking in iron vessels, as well as sugar; and so are apples and apple-sauce, and sundry other fruits and vegetables. The word apple-sauce reminds me of an incident that recently occurred in my own family. A kind neighbor having sent us some apple-sauce, such of the family as partook of it freely, suffered, soon afterward, in a way that led to the suspicion of poison. This apple-sauce was quite dark-colored, but tasted well enough.