the spirits, and such incessant occupation, the strongest constitution
will commonly go down. Hers, neither of the strongest nor the weakest,
yielded to the burden, and began to sink.

To have saved her life, then, by taking action on the warning that shone
in her eyes and sounded in her voice, would have been impossible, without
changing her nature. As long as the power of moving about in the old way
was left to her, she must exercise it, or be killed by the restraint. And
so the time came when she could move about no longer, and took to her
bed.

All the restlessness gone then, and all the sweet patience of her natural
disposition purified by the resignation of her soul, she lay upon her bed
through the whole round of changes of the seasons. She lay upon her bed
through fifteen months. In all that time, her old cheerfulness never
quitted her. In all that time, not an impatient or a querulous minute
can be remembered.

At length, at midnight on the second of February, 1864, she turned down a
leaf of a little book she was reading, and shut it up.

The ministering hand that had copied the verses into the tiny album was
soon around her neck, and she quietly asked, as the clock was on the
stroke of one:

"Do you think I am dying, mamma?"

"I think you are very, very ill to-night, my dear!"

"Send for my sister. My feet are so cold. Lift me up?"