Life in the sick-room : $b EssaysMartineau, Harriet
Science
Life in the sick-room : $b Essays
Martineau, Harriet
Conduct of life; Sick
no longer with fear, but with shame for their fear. If I alone might
make a record of the heavenly aspects which have been presented in this
one room, such a record would extinguish all revilings of man and of
life. And when I think that what has appeared to me must, in natural
course, have appeared to all my companions in infirmity, when I gather
into one all these revelations of the real moral life of society, I
perceive that, till death satisfies us in regard to a local heaven, we
may well be satisfied with that which lies all round about us--not mute,
while tender and pitying voices speak to us; nor wholly unseen, while
tearful or kindling eyes meet our own.
Thus, in some few of its leading aspects, does Life appear to the
invalid.
DEATH TO THE INVALID.
“To smell a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body; no less
are the thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul.”
FULLER.
“And yet as angels, in some brighter dreams,
Call to the soul when man doth sleep,
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.”
HENRY VAUGHAN.
What subject is so interesting to the full of life as that of death?
What taste is so universal in childhood and youth as that for learning
all that can be known of the thoughts and feelings of the dying? Did we
not all, in our young days, turn to the death part in all biographies;
to the death articles in all cyclopædias; to the discourses on sickness
and death in all sermon books; to the prayers in the prospect of death
in all books of devotion? Do not the most common-place writers of
fiction crowd their novels with death scenes, and indifferent tragedy
writers kill off almost all their characters? Do not people crowd to
executions; and do not those who stay at home learn all they can of the
last words and demeanour of the sufferers? Are not the visions of heroic
children, (and of many grown children), chiefly about pain and a noble
departure? Is there any curiosity more lively than that which we all
feel about the revelations of persons resuscitated from drowning? Is it
not their nearer position to death which makes sick persons so awful to
children who are not familiar with them,--so interesting a subject of
speculation to all? How is it then with the invalids themselves?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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