should lurk in a maiden's grave! She loves to tell how strong men
fight with fiery fevers, utterly refusing to give up their breath; and
how consumptive virgins fade out of the world, scarcely reluctant, as
if their lovers were wooing them to a far country. Tell us, thou
fearful woman! tell us the death-secrets! Fain would I search out the
meaning of words, faintly gasped with intermingled sobs, and broken
sentences, half audibly spoken between earth and the judgment-seat!

An awful woman! She is the patron saint of young physicians, and the
bosom friend of old ones. In the mansions where she enters, the
inmates provide themselves black garments; the coffin-maker follows
her; and the bell tolls as she comes away from the threshold. Death
himself has met her at so many a bedside, that he puts forth his bony
hand to greet Nurse Toothaker.

She is an awful woman! And, O, is it conceivable, that this handmaid
of human infirmity and affliction--so darkly stained, so thoroughly
imbued with all that is saddest in the doom of mortals--can ever again
be bright and gladsome, even though bathed in the sunshine of
eternity? By her long communion with woe, has she not forfeited her
inheritance of immortal joy? Does any germ of bliss survive within
her?

Hark! an eager knocking at Nurse Toothaker's door. She starts from
her drowsy revery, sets aside the empty tumbler and teaspoon, and
lights a lamp at the dim embers of the fire. Rap, rap, rap! again;
and she hurries a-down the staircase, wondering which of her friends
can be at death's door now, since there is such an earnest messenger
at Nurse Toothaker's. Again the peal resounds, just as her hand is on
the lock. "Be quick, Nurse Toothaker!" cries a man on the doorstep;