These accomplishments tended to render her superior to the rest of women but in no degree qualified her for the post of a female instructor: she saw and lamented her deficiencies, and gradually formed the resolution of supplying them. Her knowledge of the Latin tongue and of grammatical principles rendered easy the acquisition of Italian and French, these being merely Scions from the Roman stock. Having had occasion, previous to her change of dwelling, to purchase paper at a bookseller's, the man had offered her at a very low price a second-hand copy of Veneroni's grammar: the offer had been declined, her views at that time being otherwise directed. Now, however, this incident was remembered, and a resolution instantly formed to purchase the book. As soon as the light declined, and her daily task at the needle had drawn to a close, she set out to execute this purpose. Arriving at the house of the bookseller, she perceived that the doors and windows were closed. Night having not yet arrived, the conjecture easily occurred that some one had died in the house. She had always dealt with this man for books and paper, and had always been treated with civility. Her heart readily admitted some sympathy with his distress, and to remove her doubts she turned to a person who stood at the entrance of the next house, and who held a cloth steeped in vinegar to his nostrils. In reply to her question the stranger said in a tone of the deepest consternation--Mr. Watson do you mean? He is dead: he died last night of the _yellow fever_. The name of this disease was not absolutely new to her ears. She had been apprized of its rapid and destructive progress in one quarter of the city, but hitherto it had existed, with regard to her, chiefly in the form of rumour. She had not realized the nature or probable extent of the evil. She lived at no great distance from the seat of the malady, but her neighbourhood had been hitherto exempt. So wholly unused was she to contemplate pestilence, except at a distance, that its actual existence in the bosom of this city was incredible. Contagious diseases she well knew periodically visited and laid waste the Greek and Egyptian cities. It constituted no small part of that mass of evil, political and physical, by which that portion of the world has been so long afflicted. That a pest equally malignant had assailed the metropolis of her own country--a town famous for the salubrity of its air and the perfection of its police--had something in it so wild and uncouth that she could not reconcile herself to the possibility of such an event.