The miser’s history went on as before—still gaining, still adding; while the daughter’s bloom passed slowly away. Her limbs lost their roundness, her face grew sharp and hollow, and grief sat ever upon it, until her friends had almost forgotten its former mirth and beauty, and were half persuaded that it had been always so. No questioning of mine would entice her to an explanation. “It is a matter with which you can have nothing to do. There is no remedy in your hands. Let me alone; I wrestle daily with my God.” What could I say? I was silent; for it was indeed a matter with which I had nothing to do. Preach to the drunkard over his cups; to the gambler, when he wins; to the man whose garments are like unto his who came from Edom, red with the blood of men, and gain a soul for Heaven; but the miser, with one foot on Mammon, the other on the grave, never yet turned from his first love, or forgot the gods which his own hands have fashioned. John Cornelius became used to his daughter’s declining health, and soon ceased to speak of it. Indeed, engrossed in his labors of accumulation, he began to think she was well enough, as well as she ever had been, and that the change, if change there was, was in his own eyes, which had, perhaps, grown somewhat dim with age. Poor Anne! she nightly sat at her father’s knees, and nightly read to him, and he nightly praised her beauty, and called her a foolish girl, and kissed away her tears, and babbled of gold, till her heart withered within her, and she withdrew to dream of her mother, and a great joy, and to gather a new courage to begin again her ceaseless task, ever hoping, ever disappointed. Thus ran a year away. SECTION XIV. One bright morning in November, here the sweetest month of all the twelve, Mr. Cornelius called at my office, and informed me that his daughter had been sick, confined to her bed for the past two days, and had expressed a wish to see me. He said her indisposition was but slight, attributed it to some frivolous cause, and expressed a hope that it would soon pass off. I looked up into his face; he was honest; still blind to his daughter’s decay; death stood palpably before him, robed in the freshness of youth. Death! How should he see death? Gold was ever in his thoughts; gold filled his vision; his taste, his scent were gold; and gold ran clinking into his ears: death had walked his house a year unrecognized.