Bow her head and die.”
On the family’s being summoned into the chamber of death,—
“Her sister Jane was the first that entered, her eyes swollen with weeping, and seemingly half suffocated with the effort to conceal her emotions.
“‘Oh, my darling, precious,—my own sister Annie!’ she sobbed, and knelt down at the bedside, flinging her arms round her sister’s neck, kissing the gentle sufferer’s cheeks and mouth.
“‘Annie! love! darling!—don’t you know me?’ she groaned, kissing her forehead repeatedly. Could I help weeping? All who had entered were standing around the bed, sobbing, and in tears. I kept my fingers at the wrist of the dying sufferer, but could not feel whether or not the pulse beat, which, however, I attributed to my own agitation.
“‘Speak—speak—my darling Annie! speak to me; I am your poor sister Jane!’ sobbed the agonized girl, continuing fondly kissing her sister’s cold lips and forehead. She suddenly started, exclaimed, ‘Oh, God! she’s dead!’ and sank instantly senseless on the floor. Alas, alas! it was too true; my sweet and broken-hearted patient was no more.”
The author of “Guy Livingstone” gives us these noteworthy passages:
“He bent down his lofty head, and instantly their lips met, and were set together fast.
“A kiss! Tibullus, Secundus, Moore, and a thousand other poets and poetasters have rhymed on the word for centuries, decking it with the choicest and quaintest conceits. But, remember, it was with a kiss that the greatest of all criminals sealed the unpardonable sin; it was a kiss which brought on Francesca punishment so unutterably piteous that he swooned at the sight who endured to look on all the other horrors of nine-circled hell.”