"Ah!" I cried, "'Holy Living and Dying;' how familiar it looks!"
And with a mist of tears before my eyes, I turned over its well-remembered pages. Rutledge, Mrs. Roberts, were all faded away, and I was in a dim sick-room, where, on a little table by the bed a Bible and Prayer-book and Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying," had lain day after day, and week after week, the guides and comforters of a dying saint. Again I was a child, half frightened at I knew not what, in that tranquil room, half soothed by the placid smile that always met me there. Again the choking sensation rose in my throat, the nameless terror subdued me, as when longing to do something loving, I had read aloud, till my tears blinded me, in this same book. I had never seen it since then; since I had been away at school; but those five years of exile were swept away at a breath as I opened it. I sat down, and, shading my eyes with my hand, glanced over paragraphs that I knew word for word, and that made my heart ache to recall. After a while, however, the bitterness of the first recognition passed away, and it became a sort of sad pleasure to read what brought back so vividly the love and grief of my childhood.
"Shall I read aloud to you?" I said, looking up.
"I shall be very glad to hear you," she answered, in a softened tone.
I do not know whether she divined the cause of my unsteady voice, but it is not unlikely that she did, or the book may have had some similar association for herself, for after I had read nearly an hour, and closed it, she said, with a voice not over firm:
"I am very much obliged to you, young lady; that is a book that, for whatever cause we read it, is good for young and old."
"I shall be very glad to read in it again to you whenever you would like to hear me, Mrs. Roberts," I said, as I rose to go. She accompanied me to the door, and held the light till I had crossed the hall to my own room.
If I had not done her any good by the effort I had made, at least I had done some to myself.