XXX.
Even in old age, when life seems to have been gradually drawing to a close, the appearances of death are often fallacious.
A Lady in Cornwall, more than eighty years of age, who had been a considerable time declining, took to her bed, and in a few days seemingly expired in the morning. As she had often desired not to be buried till she had been two days dead, her request was to have been regularly complied with by her relations. All that saw her looked upon her as dead, and the report was current through the whole place; nay, a gentleman of the town actually wrote to his friend in the island of Scilly, that she was deceased. But one of those who were paying the last kind office of humanity to her remains, perceived some warmth about the middle of the back; and acquainting her friends with it, they applied a mirror to her mouth; but, after repeated trials, could not observe it in the least stained; her under jaw was likewise fallen, as the common phrase is; and, in short, she had the appearance of a dead person. All this time she had not been stripped or dressed; but the windows were opened as is usual in the chambers of the deceased. In the evening the heat seemed to increase, and at length she was perceived to breathe.