in his lifetime,--if she had secretly repined, because her buoyant
youth was imprisoned with his torpid age,--if ever, while slumbering
beside him, a treacherous dream had admitted another into her heart,--
yet the sick man had been preparing a revenge, which the dead now
claimed. On his painful pillow, he had cast a spell around her; his
groans and misery had proved more captivating charms than gayety and
youthful grace; in his semblance, Disease itself had won the Rosebud
for a bride; nor could his death dissolve the nuptials. By that
indissoluble bond she had gained a home in every sick-chamber, and
nowhere else; there were her brethren and sisters; thither her husband
summoned her, with that voice which had seemed to issue from the grave
of Toothaker. At length she recognized her destiny.

We have beheld her as the maid, the wife, the widow; now we see her in
a separate and insulated character; she was, in all her attributes,
Nurse Toothaker. And Nurse Toothaker alone, with her own shrivelled
lips, could make known her experience in that capacity. What a
history might she record of the great sicknesses, in which she has
gone hand in hand with the exterminating angel! She remembers when
the small-pox hoisted a red banner on almost every house along the
street. She has witnessed when the typhus fever swept off a whole
household, young and old, all but a lonely mother, who vainly shrieked
to follow her last loved one. Where would be Death's triumph, if none
lived to weep? She can speak of strange maladies that have broken
out, as if spontaneously, but were found to have been imported from
foreign lands, with rich silks and other merchandise, the costliest
portion of the cargo. And once, she recollects, the people died of
what was considered a new pestilence, till the doctors traced it to
the ancient grave of a young girl, who thus caused many deaths a
hundred years after her own burial. Strange that such black mischief