Consumption—genuine tuberculous consumption—can be cured, even in the stage of softening or abscess. Dr. J. Hughes Bennett, Professor Calkins, Dr. Parrish, Dr. Carswell, Laennec, Professor Lee, Dr. Abernethy, Sir James Clarke, and fifty other distinguished authors, declare their faith in its curability.
In not less than a thousand post-mortem examinations, the lungs have exhibited scars, concretions, or other indubitable evidences of recovery from genuine consumption. I have cured many cases with exercise and other hygienic agents.
VIOLET-PLANTING.
The heavy apple-trees
Are shaking off their snow in breezy play;
The frail anemones
Have fallen, fading, from the lap of May;
Lanterned with white the chestnut-branches wave,
And all the woods are gay.
Come, children, come away,
And we will make a flower-bed to-day
About our dear one's grave!
Oh, if we could but tell the wild-flowers where
Lies his dear head, gloried with sunny hair,
So noble and so fair,
How would they haste to bloom and weep above
The heart that loved them with so fond a love!
Come, children, come!
From the sweet, ferny meads,
Wherein he used to walk in days of yore,—
From the green path that leads,
Where the long dusty road seems wearisome,
Up to his father's door,—
Gather the tender shoots
Of budding promise, fragrance, and delight,
Fresh-sprouting violet-roots,
That, when the first June night
Shall draw about his bed its fragrant gloom,
This grave-mound may be bathed in balmy bloom,
With loving memories eloquently dumb.
Come, children, come!
No more, alas, alas!
O fairest blossoms which the wild bee sips,
Along your pleasant places shall he pass,
Ere from your freshened leaves the night-dew drips,
Culling your blooms in handfuls from the grass,
Pressing your tender faces to his lips,—
Ah, never any more!
Yet I recall, a little while before
He passed behind this mystery of death,
How, bringing home great handfuls, won away
From the dark wood-haunts where he loved to stray
Until his dewy garments were replete
With wafts of odorous breath,
With sods all mossy-sweet
And all awake and purple with new bloom
He filled and crowded every window-seat,
Until each pleasant room
Was fragrant with your mystical perfume:
Now vainly do I watch beside the door,—
Ah, never any more!
Alas, how could I know
That I so soon should strew
Your blossoms, warm with tears, above his head?
That your wet roots would cling
About the hand that wears his bridal ring,
When he who placed it there lay cold and dead?
O violets, live and grow,
That, ere the bright days go,
This turf may be with rarest beauty crowned!—
Nay, shrink not from my touch,
For these are careful and most loving hands,
Fearing and hoping much,
Which thus disturb your fair and wondering bands,
But to transfer them to more holy ground.