Didactic fiction; Family life -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction
A strong expression rose to the doctor's lips, but he repressed it,
lest he should needlessly alarm the patient. On retiring from her
chamber, he declared the case to be a very critical one; and so it
proved to be. Mary did not leave her room for some months; and when
she did, it was with a constitution so impaired that she could not
endure the slightest fatigue, nor bear the least exposure. Neither
change of climate nor medicine availed any thing toward restoring
her to health. In this feeble state she married, about twelve months
afterward, the young man who had accompanied her to the ball. One
year from the period at which that happy event took place, she died,
leaving to stranger hands a babe that needed all her tenderest care,
and a husband almost broken-hearted at his loss.
This is not merely a picture from the imagination, and highly
coloured. It is from nature, and every line is drawn with the pencil
of truth. Hundreds of young women yearly sink into the grave, whose
friends can trace to some similar act of imprudence, committed in
direct opposition to the earnest persuasions of parents or friends,
the cause of their premature decay and death. And too often other,
and sometimes even worse, consequences than death, follow a
disregard of the mother's voice of warning.
PASSING AWAY.
[From our story of "The Two Brides," we take a scene, in which some
one sorrowing as those without hope may find words of consolation.]
IN the very springtime of young womanhood, the destroyer had come;
and though he laid his hand upon her gently at first, yet the touch
was none the less fatal. But, while her frail body wasted, her
spirit remained peaceful. As the sun of her natural life sunk low in
the sky, the bright auroral precursor of another day smiled along
the eastern verge of her spiritual horizon. There was in her heart
neither doubt, nor fear, nor shrinking.
"Dear Marion!" said Anna, dropping a tear upon her white transparent
hand, as she pressed it to her lips, a few weeks after the alarming
hemorrhage just mentioned; "how can you look at this event so
calmly?"
They had been speaking of death, and Marion had alluded to its
approach to Anna, with a strange cheerfulness, as if she felt it to
be nothing more than a journey to another and far pleasanter land
than that wherein she now dwelt.
"Why should I look upon this change with other than tranquil
feelings?" she asked.
"Why? How can you ask such a question, sister?" returned Anna. "To
me, there has been always something in the thought of death that
made the blood run cold about my heart."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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