The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-06-29 00:00:00

such effect, I now for the first time learnt ; and it is too
common a case in new houses. The bedroom, which had
been selected by Robert and his wife for their own occu-
pation, had been intended to be finished in a superior
manner, so as to be available either for a best sleeping
apartment or a drawing-room. Accordingly it had been
judged proper by the economical builder to defer the
papering until the spring, when the plaster would be
better set and-hardened. How we sport with human life
to save a few pounds, and even a few shillings ! This
room was not deemed fit to receive a tawdry covering of
paper, but it was fit nevertheless for human beings to
live in ! _ _ _

I at once ordered the removal of my patient to another
and drier apartment, until the feverish symptoms under
which she then laboured should be subdued, and her re-
moval from the house altogether could be safely attempt-
ed. At length I succeeded in this object; but it was not
until the poor young creature was so fearfully prostrated;
that the short and distressing cough, to which she was
continually subject, seemed almost about to tear her
feeble and wasted frame asunder. Accordingly she was
removed to healthy apartments in town : my own house
was offered, but she preferred evidently some residence
in which she might have more unreserved and Continual
communication with her husband, from whose face, when
he was present, her eyes scarcely wandered for apaoment,
or her thoughts when he was absent. And much he
needed all the comfort and support • which his fdnd part-
ner could bestow. From the first moment that he was
aware that danger was near—that 'there was a possibility
of the dream of his young life being dispelled, and that
the cup of happiness of which he .had so briefly tasted
might be dashed from his lips—he seemed utterly stricken
down and unmanned. His business pursuits were at once
abandoned. From morning till night he took his seat by
that sick bed, often
.poor Mary's attenuated hand locked
in his, and the tears that. he could not shed burning his
very eyelids. It was .his step that moved so noiselessly
about the room, when he thought • she slept ; it was his
hand which administered her medicine with an undevia-
ting regularity, and his arm which raised and supported
her when that terrible cough racked her with agony.

There is something unspeakably affecting in the spec-
tacle of manhood so bowed down to administer the offices
which seem so much more naturally to belong to woman.
We are rude naturally ; and even to those whom we most
love, our affection is of a cold and unbending nature.'
But the sight of those so loved stricken with illness, and
fading before our eyes, has power to melt the sternest of
us. And beyond all price is the reward which we receive,
in the grateful and love-beaming looks, the gentle pressure
of the hand, and the blessings upon us breathed from
the sufferer's heart, when the lips can no longer utter
them. Poor Robert S- received this reward in all its
fulness.

I will not fatigue the reader of these sketches by dwel-
ling upon the progress of the malady under which my
poor young friend, as I had foreseen from the first, was
rapidly sinking. Repeated attacks of colds, brought on
by the damps and other noxious influences, to which she
was subjected in that wretched house, acting upon a na-
turally delicate constitution, had brought on decline,
against which I felt it in vain to strive. Indeed, Mary
herself was almost aware that her hours on earth were
numbered. Would that I could say she was resigned
under that conviction ! She was not so ; yet it was not
that she was without a Christian's hope, and the know-
ledge that there was a brighter and happier state of being
in store for her. It was a hard task to bring herself to
view with calmness the thought of resigning the newly-
tasted happiness of companionship with one beloved. I
could see this feeling betrayed, hour by hour, in the tear-
ful eyes, with which she watched every motion of her
broken-hearted husband, as he devoted himself to the
duties of the tenderest of nurses. I could see it in the
anxious and searching gaze which she would fix upon my-
self whenever I visited her—a gaze which seemed to say,
" Doctor, is there any hope that I may be spared to bless
him ?" Alas ! I could give no such hope.
It is one of the most painful parts of the medical man's
duty to be honest and truthful towards patients situated
as this poor girl was ; • and I trust 1 have ever performed
it, at all events when the imparting of a knowledge of the
extent of the danger has not been prejudicial to the chance
of a patient's recovery. As a rule, however, buoying up
the spirits with false or unwarrantable hopes, is bad. It
may sacrifice a soul, which might otherwise have weaned
itself from the world, and made its peace with eternity.
The question was at length put to me—timidly—im-
ploringly—by Mary herself—" Could I preserve her for
even a few months ?" She would die happy, she said,
then,—then, after she had left behind her a being whom
Robert would love the more, that its poor mother was in
her early grave. I never allowed her husband to learn
from me anything of this additional bereavement.
Poor Mary lies in a neighbouring church-yard ; Robert
S— left this town a broken-hearted man, and, if still
living, is located in Pernambuco, having sailed for South
America as soon after his loss as he could arrange his
affairs. The villa, which wrecked his happiness, is fast
becoming a wreck itself, being untenanted in the hands of
a mortgagee, who will, no doubt, discover soon enough
that better securities for money may be had than such
stucco-fronted and elaborately adorned edifices.