I would not wish for a better specimen of faith and confidence than was shown by one of my patients, Edward Brown, a stoker, with whose little narrative I will commence my sketches.
“Ah! doctor,” he said one day, “I wish you had had to do with me when I came back from the East.”
“Why?” I said, and went on dressing a very serious injury he had received to one hand, caused by his crushing it between a large piece of coal and the edge of the furnace door.
“Because I should have got better much quicker if I had known you.”
“Perhaps not,” I said, “your own medical man may have done his best.”
“Perhaps he did,” was the reply. “But, lor! hard down I was just then. It brings it all up again—those words.”
“What words?” I said. “There, don’t let that bandage be touched by anyone.”
“‘In the midst of life we are in death.’”
“Why, Brown!” I exclaimed.
“Yes sir, those were the words—‘In the midst of life we are in death.’ And they sounded so quiet and solemn, that Mary and I stopped short close to the old-fashioned gate at the little churchyard; and then, as if we moved and thought together, we went in softly to the funeral, and stood at a little distance, me with my hat off and Mary with her head bent down, till the service was over.