University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.
SAMUEL AMONG LUNATICS.

JUST for a minute?” says Mrs. Whiteflock, and,
being moved by an instinctive admonition, she
went out of the room.

“Madam! and to me?” cries Mrs. Fairfax,
with angry reproachfulness of tone and manner.
“Pardon me,” says the doctor, but that would not be quite
proper here — you understand?”

But the unfortunate widow understood nothing of the
sort indicated by the doctor's evasive that. Indeed she was
one of those affectionally demonstrative women who habitually
say to the man they have to hold and to keep: “My
sweetest, will you help me to gravy? Love, a potato?”
and “Darling, some beefsteak — fat if you please, darling?”
and do not see that they thereby outrage the eternal fitness
of things.

Mrs. Fairfax, therefore, cast still more reproachful looks
upon her man, who, having by this time felt the pulse and
examined the tongue of the patient, was engaged in spreading
a blister of Spanish flies, as big as the full moon.

“There is a time for all things, Margaret,” he says, glancing
toward the door to make sure that Mrs. Whiteflock was
not approaching; “a time for blisters, and a time for — that!”

“Suppose there is,” says the widow, beating the carpet
with her foot, “I don't see that it is any reason why a person
who is engaged to a person should behave to a person as
though they had never seen a person before!”

“There is such a thing as propriety,” says the doctor, still
intent upon his blister.

“Yes, but I disagree with you as to what propriety is.”

“So I perceive, and am sorry for it.” And the doctor
concentrates his entire attention upon his patient, with all
the indifference of a real husband.

“Appetite good?”

Peter shakes his head.

“A blue pill before each meal — that will fetch you up.”

“How about sleep? Sound and refreshing?”

“No, sir; just t'other ways; onsound and onrefreshing.”

“Half a wine-glass of brandy, and blue pill, on retiring.”

“Chest and lungs free from pain?”

“No, doctor; pain is free with them.”

“Ah, indeed! but on the whole, rather a favorable
symptom. Pain is not a disease, my good sir, but an effect;
a warning, as it were, that we must be up and doing. We
must remove the disease with our blue pills, and we shall
hear no more of the pain. Why, sir, I have cured curvature
of the spine, and even softening of the brain with one box
of these wonderful restoratives!”

“Will they cure curvature of the mind?” says Peter;
“'cause that is what has got hold o' me! A disease which
I've had it ever since afore I was born, I may say.”

“Ah to be sure!” says the doctor sympathetically; and
then he says they will cure any form of disease to which
poor humanity is subject — mild or malignant, acute or
chronic. Thousands of cases have been cured, simply by the
use of the blue pill, that have defied the powers of the aurist
and the oculist, Ear-ache, noises in the head, intolerance of
light, sore eyes, weak eyes, dimness or distorted vision,
strabismus, opacity of the comea, falling of the eyelid, double
sight, cancer, worms, vertigo or dizziness, gout, nervousness,
consumption, rheumatism, paralysis, and, in short, every form
of disease known to the profession.

Some doctors have their specialty, and their special remedies,
but the great remedial agent is mercury, to be employed,
of course, by the skilful physician with reference to the age,

sex, temperament and habits of the patient. The whole
range of the materia medica ought, in my judgment, to be
reduced to this sole agent, its modes of administration and
action upon the animal economy. Of course I did not propose
to eschew cupping, venesection and blistering by means
of the fly or cantharis.” Instead of shining down the doctor,
Mrs. Fairfax felt that she was herself shone down, the way
he ran over a list of diseases alone was to her mind quite
overwhelming.

“I will bring him to feel my power one way or another,”
she says to herself, and she crosses the room with a high
head, and joining Mrs. Whiteflock, who has just entered,
opens a conversation upon well-buckets.

“Is yours, or rather, I should say, Mr. Whiteflock's ironbound,”
she says, “and was it made by our old friend, Mr.
Hoops?” And then she tells about her own, and how it
began to give out some along last fall, and how she got it
mended with a new hoop or so, and how it gave out again,
along towards Christmas, and how she docktored it up herself
with a bit of twine and a nail; “for you know, Sister
Whiteflock,” she says, with an emphasis of great satisfaction
“that we can sometimes manage little ailments at home and
amongst ourselves better than any of the doctors!”

And then she tells how the bucket gave out for good, and
all along toward spring, in March she thinks it was, the fore
part of March, and how she made it serve on one way and
another, with corks and strings and nails, for to say the truth,
she was loth to part with the old bucket; her first husband
got it for her, and then she blushes and omits the first, and
goes on; her husband got it for her in his day — poor dear
man — Mrs. Whiteflock remembers him, and how tall and
straight and handsome he was; this being especially meant
to nettle the doctor who was short and uncommonly thick.
But at last she says, “it happened one evening when Mr.
Hoops was at our house, that we went together to the well
for a glass of water,” and then she laughs and says “of course
we went for a glass of water, what else should we go for?
And while we were standing there in the moonlight leaning
against the curb and talking of who was courting and who
had been married lately, and so on, for you know, my dear,
how he does run on upon such subjects, I said, as he began
to be too personal, `By the way, Mr. Hoops, what will it

cost me to get a new well-bucket made?' And I called his
attention the more effectually to call it off from other things,
to the rickety old one.

“And he says, says he, `that'll depend on who you give
the job to. Some,' says he, `would charge you five dollars.'

“And then I says, says I, `I shan't employ those kind,'
says I, `not if I can do better.'

“And, says he, `you can do a good deal better, if you
don't scorn my work too much.'

“And, says I, I says, `I don't scorn your work at all; on
the contrary, I think your work is superb, judging from my
churn-dasher, which is all the work you have ever done for
me.'

“And, says he, he says, `whose fault has it been that
your work has gone to the t'other shops? Not mine, I'm
sure.'

“And then I says, says I, `it hasn't been mine, neither.
Mr. Hoops,' says I, `for I've only had a new ear put into
the milk-pail, and that one new churn-dasher, since my poor
husband's time; and you had one o' them jobs,' says I, `and
it was a mistake about your not having the other one too.'

“But I saw he felt hurt, for all; he's a man of tender feelings,
you know; and to make my story short, I just gave
him the job at once, and I suppose he means to lay himself
out to make me a splendid bucket; for if he's been to see
me once about it, he's been ten times, I reckon.'

“Perhaps he only makes the bucket an excuse for the
visits!” says Mrs. Whiteflock.

“O no, I think not; he wouldn't have me!” answers Mrs.
Fairfax. And then she laughs and tosses her head in a way
that she means to be contradictory of her words.

And directly she says if she was going to marry at all, she
would have him as soon as any one; for he is such a nice-spoken
man, and so considerate of a woman's feelings! but
really she has no idea of marrying again; how can she, when
her heart is in the grave.

“Mrs. Whiteflock, says the doctor, for he could not keep
his place by Peter any longer, “I desire to leave some special
directions about your husband's treatment with yourself; he
is apt to be forgetful and negligent, I imagine, not that the
case is critical, by any means; it will yield to treatment, I
have no doubt; but you know the wise saying — an ounce of

prevention, &c., and the preventive, madam, is the blue pill.
The laws of hygiene are based solely and entirely upon
mercury. What sunshine is to the natural world, mercury
is to the human economy!”

Then he gave the strictest orders about Peter's diet.
“Dietetics, madam,” he said, “have their place among the
laws of hygiene, but by no means a prominent one. However,
any derangement of the natural functions, but more
especially any derangement that causes emaciation of body,
demands the most vigorous abstinence from all meats and
other nourishing kinds of food. The cellular tissue, madam,
which is that aggregation of countless minute cells or vesicles,
that in plants composes their texture or substance, and
in the human system forms the tissue which unites the
organs and envelops every part of the body, and which in
its diminutive cells holds or contains a fluid, intended and
calculated to facilitate and promote the action or motion of
the separate parts on each other, must have time, you perceive,
to recuperate itself without being called on to assist,
indirectly, as it does, in the performance, labor, or work of
digestion. Hence, madam, you perceive, observe or understand
the absolute necessity of keeping down the dietetics
of your husband to the lowest possible grade. If he have a
longing for food it is quite fictious, remember, and not to
be in the least regarded. I would recommend water-gruel,
buttermilk, whey, and if at any time he should be very importunate,
for sick persons have unaccountable whims, a
spoonful or two of chicken-broth, very weak, or a thin bit
of burnt toast dipt in vinegar. If an acceleration of the
pulse denoting fever be observed, which is always characterized
by languor and thirst, tea of camomile or other bitter
herbs may be administered, but cold water must be rigidly
prohibited; not one drop of that, madam, for your life!
Sleep is of no consequence; the less of it, and the less
sound, the better, but the fresh air is to be guarded against;
the patient's chamber must be carefully closed, day and night,
and I would recommend a discontinuance of those daily
walks; they exhaust the nervous energies with almost fatal
rapidity. I would recommend, too, that the patient abstain
from all employment; let his attention be concentrated as
much upon himself and his disease as possible, exclude all
sunshine and cheerful conversation from his apartment, and

attend with unvarying punctuality to the administering of
the remedial agencies.

“We may, I think, for the present, content ourselves with
the application of a blister to the region of the stomach,
and with mustard plasters to the soles of the feet; and with
strict prosecutions of these few orders, I see no reason to
doubt a speedy and permanent recovery.”

And with a promise to visit his patient at an early hour
on the following day, Dr. Allprice bowed himself and backed
himself out, for he was a man exceedingly fond of ceremony,
in his own little way. Mrs. Fairfax found it hard to conceal
her bitter humiliation and disappointment; but she caught
at whatever she might, as a sinking person will, and with
various pitiable flounderings kept herself from going quite
under the turbulent wave.

She had confidently expected the doctor to see her home,
but instead of that he had left her without any intimation
that he would ever see her. She wished the well-bucket at
the bottom of the sea, and that she had never heard of Mr.
Hoops; she wished she had remained at home with her sick
child, though not for the sick girl's sake, it is to be feared.
She was angry with the doctor; hated him with that sort
of hatred that borders on the confines of love. She was
angry with herself, but most and chiefly was she vexed with
her innocent friend and neighbor, Mrs. Whiteflock! But
why she could not have told.

“By the way, sister,” she says, as she tied her bonnet
strings, “your daughter, Martha, hasn't come in yet, has
she?”

“I am by no means sure she was out,” replies Mrs. Whiteflock,
affecting a quiet unconcern she by no means feels.
“Come again, my dear, very, very soon.”

“O, certainly; there is no one I am so fond of visiting;
take the best care of Peter — I beg pardon — of your good
husband, I should have said,” and with a kiss and a long
pressure of the hand, the old friends parted.

“What a hypocrite the woman is!” cries Mrs. Whiteflock
when the door is closed; “I hope she won't come here
again for one while!” And then she opens Peter's shirt and
applies the blister with a will.

“Well,” says Mrs. Fairfax, mentally, as she allows the
gate to slam behind her; “that girl Martha is a chip of the

old block, sure enough! They're all a pretty set, but I would
not 'a' believed they were quite so bad, if I hadn't 'a' seen
with my own eyes! What is the world coming to? Just
to think of that little chit of a girl — not fifteen! If Sister
Whiteflock doesn't get her pay, I'm mistaken; that's all.”
And she turns aside from the direct path homeward, in
order to make a little call at Brother Timpson's and unburden
her mind, but on reflection she concluded that if the
secret of which she was now sole mistress were to get
abroad, it might thwart the very end she hoped for; she
therefore contented herself with some vague hints and insinuations,
and at last took her solitary way homeward across
the fields, trampling through the weeds in preference to
walking in the open path, as some alleviation to her feelings,
for there was perilous stuff pent up within her bosom.

The following morning while they were yet at breakfast,
Margaret sipping tea with a little dry toast — the mother
had reduced her diet to correspond with the doctor's directions
to Peter — Wolf, as he sat upright in the door, gave a
growl of alarm and defiance; the next moment wheels were
heard grating along the graveled road, and there was Mr.
Lightwait in the butcher's carryall.

“I thought perhaps you would like to drive to town with
us, Sister Fairfax,” he said, with that smile of his that
hovered close upon gravity, “and am come, as you see,
amply provided.”

“But what a wretched horse and harness and things,”
cries Margaret, laughing out, and beginning to eat the toast
which she has hitherto only made a pretence of eating.

“O, you are ashamed to drive with me, are you, my proud
young lady! then we shall have to leave her at home, shan't
we, Sister Fairfax?”

“Indeed I would not dare allow her to go out of the
house without first consulting Doctor Allprice,” replies the
mother with great concern. And then she tells how very
bad Peter Whiteflock is — “You would never think it,” she
says, “to see him; he eats, sleeps, and, to all appearance, is
well as can be, but la me! what do we in our ignorance
know? I was with him yesterday when Doctor Allprice
came, and if you had heard his orders I rather guess you
would think he was sick! why he won't allow him one
mouthful of meat, nor hardly anything else!” And in this

statement she was not so far from the truth as it happened
to her to be sometimes.

“I feel so much better, indeed I do!” says Margaret,
appealing to her mother.

“Don't be alarmed,” says Mr. Lightwait, patting her cheek,
“I have come to take you to see our poor Samuel, and I
propose to carry out my intention, that is to say, unless your
good mother and Doctor Allprice (for whose authority I
entertain the highest respect) should set themselves bodily
as well as wilfully against me.”

“I shall cast the responsibility all upon you, then, dear
Brother Lightwait,” says Mrs. Fairfax, playfully shaking her
finger in his face. Then she said, of course she must go;
she could not think of trusting Margaret alone so far from
her protecting care.

Doctor Allprice will hear of this, she said to herself, and
then I shall be even with him! Mr. Hoops and the well-bucket
sunk into insignificance in comparison with this great
affair.

Margaret was soon ready. She had not to bestow so much
care upon her toilet as the mother, and her pale face looked
very charming under the rose-colored hood tied so close
beneath her chin.

“I will take the seat beside you, Brother Lightwait,” says
Mrs. Fairfax, “I am so fond of looking at the horse!”

The morning was one of the most beautiful of the summer,
with that delicious softness in the air, so like a bath of
fine odors, that characterizes the mornings and evenings of
southern Ohio. The hay-making was going on in the fields
by the way, the cows yet stood in the milking yards with
their sunrise shadows, tall and fantastic, beside them, the
smoke was curling from the homesteads, and the busy housewives
plying their morning care about the doors and cool
well-side pavements. The roads were in the best order, so
that in spite of the rickety carryall and the clumsy, big-headed
and ill-conditioned animal before it, the drive was
really charming. After half an hour, the farms began to
diminish to garden plots, and the farmhouses with their
dingy walls and low porches, to give place to white and
sparkling villas, and directly, where the high hills dropped
abruptly, to the mill-creek valley a blue gleam of the River
of Beauty might be caught between the gray roofs and

clustering spires of the Queen City, now distinctly visible.
Down, and down, and down, past the wooded slope where
the Spring Grove Cemetery now lies in its serene beauty,
but where then whipporwills held court, and filled all the
shadowy place with their melancholy music, across the dusty
old bridge, and the city disappears again, and nothing is to
be seen but the green ring of hills with which it is so completely
hemmed in.

And now they come upon those neat and thrifty vegetable
gardens, that lie, acre upon acre, and field against field,
sparkling and gleaming in dew and sun, their green freshness
and golden ripeness and flowering bloom, showing along
the bed of the valley like one of those variegated quilts
which thriving housewives cunningly piece together. But
fast the gardens slipped behind, and the dewy freshness gave
place to dryness and dust, and then came the smoke and din
and clatter of factories, the vile odors of soap and bone
boiling, and the shocking closeness and endless continuity
of the swine and cattle-pens. Mrs. Fairfax poured out her
shallow stream of talk all the same, but Margaret pulled her
hood down about her eyes, silently troubled about these,
and many other things.

“I dare say you have friends to see, shopping, and other
matters on hand, that will take up your morning;” Mr.
Lightwait says, as they crossed the bridge of the canal and
turned toward Main Street, “and for my part, I have to visit
the Book Concern, beside a dozen other places. So, with
your approval, we will postpone our call upon Samuel until
the afternoon.”

“With all my heart,” responds Mrs. Fairfax, “the longer
delayed the better.”

Margaret stifled the sigh that rose to her lip, and sought to
reconcile her disappointed heart with the reflection that the
delay could not be for long now, at any rate. A time and
place of reunion were agreed upon, and the ladies at length
set down somewhere in the neighborhood of Fifth and
Walnut streets, where Mrs. Fairfax proposed to purchase
sundry trifles for the adornment of her charming person.

There was here no touch of the coolness and freshness of
the country morning; the sun was nearly at the meridian
now, and the oppression of the hot pavement beneath her feet
and the close walls about her, caused Margaret to stagger
and put her hand to her brow.

“What's the matter now?” says the mother, all sweetness
gone from her voice.

“Nothing,” Margaret answers, trying to gather her weakness
into strength, as she best could.

“I knew well enough it would be so!” says the mother,
exulting, as it seemed, in the fulfilment of her prediction,
and without offering so much as a helping hand, she walked
stoutly forward, pausing only to catch at the calicoes, flannels
and ribbons, flaunting over the doorways of the shops.
Sometimes she looked back, to be sure, but with an irritated,
mortified, and reproachful expression.

So for two long hours the sick girl, smothered under her
woollen hood and shawl, dragged after the mother, who was
an inveterate bargain-hunter, up and down and across and
back, out and in the self-same shops over and over. Whether
she wanted an article, or whether she didn't, was all one.
She must needs know the price, hold it up to the light, and
pull and stretch and cheapen it.

At length a blindness came upon Margaret's eyes, and the
hot pavement seemed to be whirling under her feet, and all
breathless, overtaking her mother, and catching at her sleeve
as she was making a dive at a strip of coarse, but brilliantly
dyed carpet that from a high window swung low to the
street, she said, “I am fainting, I must have a drink of water,
I can't see anything.”

“Bless my heart, what a child you are! here, you mustn't
fall in the street, what will folks think!” And, reluctantly
letting go the carpet, she took her by the shoulder, and
brought her somewhat round by means of a smart shake.
Then she pulled her across the street and into a basement
grocery store that stood on the corner of what was then
Western Row and Baker's Alley. An unpleasant odor pervaded
the place, made of a combination of fishes, fowls,
liquors and spices, the smells of whiskey and codfish being
predominant.

The woman who tended the shop made haste to fetch a
glass of water from the hydrant at the door, warm as dish
water, and not so pellucid as a dewdrop, but offered with
right good will, and most gratefully accepted.

“Can I leave her here for an hour or so?” says Mrs. Fairfax
as soon as Margaret, having swallowed the draught,
began to revive a little. “She's got the nasty chills, but she

would come to town to-day in spite of everything, and now
she has to pay for it!”

“Poor dear!” says the kind-hearted woman, “I've had
the ager myself; it's shook all the teeth out o' my head
purty nigh — see!” And pushing her upper lip aside with
her finger, she exhibited the toothless gums, talking in a
mumbling voice while the exhibition was going on.

In course the girl could stay as long as she would, and
she would be obliged to her for her company into the bargain.

“Run, Leonora, and fetch your ma's rocking-chair! and
mind, Leonora, that you don't disturb your pa!”

“She shall have something better than a barrel to set on,
too,” when the child returned, staggering under the weight
of a big arm-chair.

“You must not let her be too troublesome.” And Mrs.
Fairfax peeps into the little fly-specked looking-glass that
hangs against the casement of the broad window, and so she
goes away.

“Live anywhere's nigh?” says the woman, seating herself
on the whiskey barrel which at her urgent solicitation
Margaret had exchanged for the chair. She named the
place of her residence, languidly and without looking up.

“Bloomington!” says the woman, “lawsy marsy, there's
the place where Father Goodman was for a couple o' year.”

Margaret looks up now and observes the woman. She
had a baby at her bosom, and her dress, negligently open,
showed several inches of corset-board, thick as a stave, together
with a good deal of coarse, soiled embroidery. She
had crossed one knee over the other, and with the foot that
touched the floor swayed herself to and fro on the barrel
with as much ease and comfort, apparently, as though she
were seated in her own rocking-chair.

She wore a high, carved comb in her thin flaxen hair —
her sleeves were pushed above her elbows — her gaiters,
once fine, were unstrung, lop-sided and greasy, and the
heavy, filled hoops of her ear-rings had slitted her ears nearly
in two. She had quite a wasp's waist, and her slazy lilac
silk was flounced to the knees with “pinked” flounces.

She had been a belle, no doubt, in her girlhood. Her baby
had a big, blotchy head, a nose sunken well out of sight
between its fat cheeks, and the fingers of one hand all
webbed together.

It was dressed, however, after the manner of more promising
darlings; the neck, arms and part of the bust, bare,
and with petticoats duly embroidered, and of such extreme
length as to trail constantly along the sawdust and tobacco
quids that sprinkled the floor.

But with all its hopelessness and deformity, it was evidently
a treasure in the eyes of the mother, for she said,
shaking it loose from her bosom and holding it up for the
admiration of Margaret, “It ain't nigh so purty as some of
'em have been — I've had six — but if it wasn't for its nose,
— that comes o' his drinking, I reckon, — and if its hand is
kep' out o' sight, it looks as well as anybody's baby!” And
then she threatened to eat it up alive; it was such a darling
rose-bud, and so sweet, she couldn't help it, she said.

“Do you know Father Goodman?” Margaret asked, so
soon as her politeness would allow her to give over admiration
of the wonderful baby.

“Know him? well, I reckon I do. My own father is class-leader
in the church he's over now; it's two hundred mile
from here, at a place called Big Bend; not much of a town,
but mighty nice folks there, they say. We expect father in
October, along after potatoes is dug; he don't bring no
potatoes to sell, though; he's rich and comes to visit me
and the children. Father never liked him, he didn't; fact
is, 'twas a runaway match between him and me; marry in
haste and repent at leisure, that's about the way of it! He's
drunk up stairs now, and as cross as a bear. Laws, I wish
you could see him; he's a sight, I can tell you, — his face is
nigh about as red as the baby's petticoat. Would you like
to go up and peek through the crack o' the door? It's just
as good as to see a hyena, all kind o' bristled up like as if
he was a wild beast!” No, Margaret would not care to see
him; she was quite satisfied with what she had heard.

“Heard!” says the woman, “hearing is nothing! If I
should just tell you what I've underwent! I wouldn't have
my folks to know it, though, for half the grocery. Why,
last year when my father was here I kept him locked up in
the back-cellar for nigh onto a week, and when he screeched
and scratched round I pretended 'twas the cat — father
being some deaf, you see! He's a-coming agin, father is, in
October; he expects to get here by the fifth, father does,
and to start back to the Big Bend country by the tenth,

anyhow; he don't believe in long visits, father don't, and
what I'll do with him, then, the dear only knows! but maybe
some way'll be pinted out as it was afore.” Then she told
Margaret that he was just as good a husband as ever was
when he wasn't in liquor, and the best of providers.

“He doesn't get into one of his regular tantrums very
often,” she says, “not more than once a week, anyhow, and
they don't last more than two or three days for the most
part, and when they're onto him I always tie him to the bedpost
with a particular kind of knot I use for such occasions
special, and he can't ontie himself till the worst is over, and
that's a great mercy — he's tied now; won't you peek in?
'taint but a step.”

And then she says, “That's why I'm in the store, me and
the young 'uns; when he's to himself he won't allow it. No,
indeed, he'll hardly allow me to wet my hands, he's that fond
of me.” And so for two hours she ran on, now praising
him and now blaming him, affecting between whiles to
devour the hands, especially the club-hand, of her baby, and
in reality devouring scraps of smoked jowls and bacon hams
with which the wall beside her was garnished, and which
she wrenched and twisted away with her dirty ringed
fingers; her dress gaping wide all the time, and the little
nose of the baby wriggling almost continually among the
grimy embroideries.

The shops proved a fascination too strong for Mrs. Fairfax,
as they were likely to do, and the time of her return was
delayed an hour beyond the one appointed. She was hungry
and tired and out of humor, she said, though she might have
spared herself the trouble of mentioning the latter infirmity,
as it spoke plainly for itself, and if she had her way, would
prefer to go home at once. She didn't wish to see old Sam
Dale for her part, and she couldn't imagine why Margaret
should wish to see him. He was just the last person under
the sun that she had desired to see at any time; much less
did she desire to see him now that he was either turned fool
or gone crazy — no one knew which, nor cared.

They found Mr. Lightwait at the place agreed upon. He
had been waiting some time, he said, but he manifested no
impatience; on the contrary, he was equable and quietly
genial, as ever; he only feared, he said, looking at his watch,
that they might be too late to see Samuel; the hours for

admitting visitors expired at three o'clock, and it was near
that time now. Then Mrs. Fairfax put her face down very
close, and they had a little whispered consultation, at the
close of which she had brightened up a good deal, and expressed
a hope that they might not be too late.

This was all long before that excellent asylum for the
insane, which now, with its ample buildings and beautiful
grounds, adorns one of the suburbs of the “Queen City,”
was projected; and when a single ward of the city hospital
was used for the accommodation and treatment of lunatics.

“Here we are!” cries Mrs. Fairfax, as she jumped to the
ground, in a state of happy excitement, and saw the shambling
legs and cadaverous faces through the high railing of
iron that inclosed the hospital yard. Margaret pressed one
hand hard against her beating heart, scarcely daring to raise
her eyes lest she might discover at one of the grated windows
the face she so longed, yet dreaded, to see.

Mr. Lightwait, with considerate tenderness, gave her his
arm, and they went in through the great creaking doors, and
climbed a long flight of bare, iron-faced stairs, and were
ushered into the matron's parlor. There they were kept
waiting a good while, and the time seemed to Margaret
twice as long as it was in reality. Mr. Lightwait had seated
himself close beside her, and as in her nervous agitation she
picked at the old hair-cloth of the sofa, he reassured her
from time to time with a smile, a pressure of the hand, or
a whispered word. When the matron appeared at last, a
gaunt woman in musty black, she trembled outright. It was
as she feared, too late; and the matron, as she took out her
gold watch to confirm her decision, seemed glad to have it
so; her high nose grew higher, and her black eyes blacker,
with satisfaction, as she silently shook her head.

Mr. Lightwait yielded the point with such graceful deference
(it was just as he had designed it should be) that some
of her austerity immediately gave way — there was a great
deal worth seeing, she said, two women just dead within five
minutes, in the poor ward. She would have them shown
round, although the time for seeing visitors was passed. She
could not, however, promise them the sight of a single lunatic,
least of all that terrible one they had had come to see.
She was afraid of him, for her part; he looked so ferocious
and bloodthirsty! He was shut up in one of the “strong

rooms” — they might see, if they chose, a room like his, so
as to know for themselves what sort of accommodations
they gave to murderers! This fellow was no doubt affecting
his craziness in order to escape punishment, but she
rather thought he would be cured, if the present treatment
were continued long enough.

“Of course you will see the corpses!” she said, at last,
leading the way. And then she said she thought ministers
of the gospel, and she understood Mr. Lightwait was one,
ought to embrace every opportunity of looking upon the
dead, though what virtue went with such employment she
did not explain.

There they were — fifty cot-beds all in a row, running
down the centre of the long, narrow room. The walls, floor,
tables, everything was bare, and two of the beds were bare
of bed-clothes and pillows, and on these lay the bodies of
the two dead women — the naked feet sticking up stiff — the
bust protruding and the head low. About the jaws of one
a white handkerchief was tied, and over the eyelids of the
other a vial of laudanum and a pill-box were placed.

Some of the faces were spotted, some white and ghastly,
and some scarlet with fever, and they were mostly the faces
of women, old, or far past middle life, but here and there
was a head with a crown of bright young hair, and here and
there a hand, smooth and fair as a lily, picked at the counterpane
or waved itself anxiously to and fro, as though it were
beckoning to that shadowy helper, feared now no longer.

The atmosphere was oppressive, and the sights and sounds
appalling to one unaccustomed to such a place, and Margaret
turned away, faint and sick.

“There, child!” says the matron, “this will revive you!”
and lifting her skirt, she took from the huge pocket that
dangled against her quilted petticoat a piece, or rather lump,
of greasy, highly spiced pound cake! “It's got cinnamon in
it,” she urges, “and I mostly keep it in my pocket, especially
when I go about the corpses!”

Margaret declined the cake, but accepted smelling-salts;
and when she was a little better, the matron insisted on her
seeing some of the lunatics — “that'll fetch you up directly,”
she says.

That night upon her little bed at home, both awake and
in her sleep, Margaret lived the whole scene over. She saw

the long row of narrow beds with the livid faces looking out
of them, the old, withered hands that had done their last
work, the scrawny necks turning this way and that, and the
dull, sunken eyes looking hopelessly out of the leaden circles
about them. She saw the two dead bodies stretched
straight on their coarse sheets, but what haunted her more
than the rest was the burning cheek and flashing eyes of a
young girl, the golden tangles of whose long hair lay in a
shining heap in her bosom; they had just been cut off, but
she clutched them close and twisted her slender white
fingers among them as if she could not and would not give
them up. “She is from the country,” the matron had said,
and then she had whispered with Mrs. Fairfax, and the two
women had shaken their heads, and this was all; but the
imagination of Margaret made up such a history of love betrayed,
of desertion and poverty and sickness, that she
moaned as she spun it out.

She saw the “strong rooms,” with their hard, bare walls
and floors, the grated window, so high and so small, the iron
bedstead, the iron stancheon and ring, and the door, so heavy
and so strongly secured with bars and bolts; the aperture,
no bigger than a rat-hole, for the secret observations of the
keeper, and at each of these spaces she saw in her mind's
eye, one sad, reproachful face.

The memory of the lunatics was less horrible; the gibbering
women going up and down in their fantastic apparel,
and with close-cut locks and unmeaning eyes, did not haunt
her as did these cells, nor as did the hot-cheeked girl with
her lost treasure hugged to her bosom.

Even the “incurables” in their straight jackets and scanty
petticoats, tied like so many corpses to their wooden chairs,
came back to her less vividly. She could see them all, the
unsexed and hairy-faced, those who had grown big and
coarse as beasts, and those whose limbs were become crooked
and knotty and bulged and bunched, the big flippers of feet,
the filmy eyes, fixed as if set, the long, loose ears, the gray
heads and the snow-white heads, they were before her,
visible through all the dark, visible no matter how fast she
shut her eyelids down. But, crowding them back, and
demanding a place closer than any of them, was the image
of him she had failed to see, for awake or in sleep, her heart
was filled with the thought of Samuel.

Should she ever see him again, and if so, what would he
say to her? She had no question as to what she should say
to him. She would tell him that she loved him, let come
what would.

And this resolve comforted her; a downright resolve
always helps us, one way or another; sometimes from the
execution of our resolve.