Will you have pleasant evenings at your home now?
Go into your parlor that your prim housekeeper has made comfortable with clean hearth and blaze of sticks.
Sit down in your chair; there is another velvet cushioned one, over against yours—empty. You press your fingers on your eye-balls, as if you would press out something that hurt the brain; but you cannot. Your head leans upon your hand; your eye rests upon the flashing blaze.
Ashes always come after blaze.
Go now into the room where she was sick—softly, lest the prim housekeeper come after.
They have put new dimity upon her chair; they have hung new curtains over the bed. They have removed from the stand its vials, and silver bell; they have put a little vase of flowers in their place; the perfume will not offend the sick sense now. They have half opened the window, that the room so long closed may have air. It will not be too cold.
She is not there.
—Oh, God! thou who dost temper the wind to the shorn lamb—be kind!
The embers were dark; I stirred them; there was no sign of life. My dog was asleep. The clock in my tenant’s chamber had struck one.
I dashed a tear or two from my eyes; how they came there I know not. I half ejaculated a prayer of thanks, that such desolation had not yet come nigh me; and a prayer of hope—that it might never come.