according to the best medical opinions, highly beneficial to persons of
a consumptive habit.

For two years before this--that is since his brother's death--the health
of young Osborne had been watched with all the tender vigilance of
affection. A regimen in diet, study and exercise, had been prescribed
for him by his physician; the regulations of which he was by no means to
transgress.

In fact his parents lived under a sleepless dread of losing him which
kept their hearts expanded with that inexpressible and burning
love which none but a parent so circumstanced can ever feel. Alas!
notwithstanding the promise of life which early years usually hold
out, there was much to justify them in this their sad and gloomy
apprehension. Woeful was the uncertainty which they felt in
discriminating between the natural bloom of youth and the beauty of that
fatal malady which they dreaded. His tall slender frame, his transparent
cheek, so touching, so unearthly in the fairness of its expression; the
delicacy of his whole organization, both mental and physical--all, all,
with the terror of decline in their hearts, spoke as much of despair as
of hope, and placed the life and death of their beloved boy in an equal
poise.

But, independently of his extraordinary personal advantages, all his
dispositions were so gentle and affectionate, that it was not I in
human nature to entertain harsh feeling toward him. Although modest and
shrinking, even to diffidence, he possessed a mind full of intellect and
enthusiasm: his imagination, too, overflowed with creative power, and
sought the dreamy solitudes of noon, that it might, far from the bustle
of life, shadow forth those images of beauty which come thickly only