‘A form stood by me--a little maid. O! how the innocent words and kind attentions of infancy, soothe the pillow of an irritable sickness! We can’t bear the cold studied kindness of such as we are, we are jealous of them; we fear they will condole with us, curse us with their stinted pity; and that too in the measured phraseology which speaks of the head and not of the heart. But a child, a gentle child--to see its little form gliding about your couch--to feel its little arms about your pillow--to catch its warm breath on your cheek as winds breathed from flowers--and see the kind and touching solicitude of the eye unused to sights of sorrow, yet enduring it like a martyr, and for ourselves too,--these make irritable diseases tolerable--may I not say happy? for the evidence of a pure and devoted affection in a human being, makes a misanthrope (and such I then was) contented with misery. And my disease was of this nature: it was a nervousness induced by excess of suffering, and my faculties had become so exquisite, that the least thing sent a dart through me that seemed tearing flesh and soul asunder. “Mother! is she--?” excessive weakness forbade me finish the sentence. “Your mother lives”--but she placed her finger upon her lips in token of silence. I attempted to answer--she laid her hand upon my mouth with a sweet smile, then turned and left the room. ‘Weeks passed, and still was I the denizen of a sick room; and but slowly regaining my pristine energies. My form had shrunk away--my eyes were sunk--my voice was almost entirely gone; and as I slowly paced my apartment and from the window threw my eyes on the dreariness without, (for the year had gone far into later fall, and the loud winds whistled bitterly through the naked poplars) I felt as if I had but little to do in the world, and would as lief go from it. But yet, one thing held me back, one thirst, one burning desire--the wish to see my mother. She I had not seen, and for reasons I could not unravel, her name was never mentioned. And though I was told she was in the house, I was not suffered to visit her. She was sick, but not dangerous--received my messages of love daily--returned them--this was all.