One of my schoolmates, the eldest child of a widow who had five others to provide for, had just begun working for a shop situated a full mile from her mother's residence. She was a bright, lively, and highly sensitive girl of sixteen. The day after bringing home a heavy bundle of coarse pantaloons, she was taken down with brain-fever. It was believed that she had been overcome by the effort required of her young and fragile frame in carrying the great burden under a hot noonday sun. She languished for days, but with intervals of consciousness, during which her inability to finish the work at the stipulated time was her constant anxiety. Her mother soothed her apprehension by assurances that a delay of a few days in the delivery could be of no consequence; and so believing, in fact, she sent no message to the tailor that her child was ill and unable to complete her task. A week of suffering thus passed. Saturday came and went without the work being delivered to her employer. But the poor girl was better, even convalescent; another week would probably enable her to resume the needle. On Sunday I went to see her. She was quiet, and in her right mind, but still anxious about her failure to be punctual.
I volunteered to call the next morning and inform the employer of her illness. I did so. He was in a mean shop, whose whole contents had been displayed in thick festoons, of jackets, shirts, and pantaloons, on the outside, where a man was pacing to and fro upon the pavement, whose vocation it was to accost and convert into a purchaser every passer-by who chanced even to look, at his goods. I was most unfavorably impressed with all that I saw about the shop. When I went in, the impression deepened. There sat the proprietor in his shirt-sleeves, a vulgar-looking creature, smoking a cigar; neither did he rise or cease to puff when I accosted him. Why should he? I was only a sewing-girl. I told him my business,—that my friend had been ill and unable to complete her work, but that she was now recovering, and would return it before many days. Putting on a sneer so sinister and vicious that it was long before I ceased to carry it in my memory, he replied,—
"It's of no consequence,—I've seen to it. She's too late."
Though the man's manner was offensive, yet I attached no particular meaning to his words. But on reaching home, my mother showed me an advertisement in a widely circulated penny-paper which we took, warning the poor sick sewing-girl to return her work immediately, on pain of being prosecuted. There was her name in full, and the number of the house in the little court where she lived. My mother was almost in tears over the announcement. We knew the family well; they were extremely poor, had been greatly afflicted by sickness, while the mother was a model of patient industry, with so deep a sense of religious obligation that nothing but her perfect reliance on the wisdom and goodness of God could have supported her through all her multiplied afflictions. Her husband had been for years a miserable drunkard, as well as dreadfully abusive of his wife and family. The daughter had sat next to me at school, to and from which we had been in the daily habit of going together. I had a strong affection for her. It was natural that I should be overwhelmed with indignation at the man who had perpetrated this wanton outrage, and excited with alarm for my poor friend, should she be made acquainted with it. All day I was in an agony of apprehension for her. It was impossible for me to go to her, as she lived a great way off, and we, too, had work on our hands which was pressingly required at the end of the week.
But that evening I stole off to see her. I had no sooner set foot within the narrow court than it was apparent that something had gone wrong. There was a group of neighbors gathered round the door, conversing in a subdued tone, as if overtaken by a common calamity. They told me that my poor young friend was dying! Some one, at the very hour when I was in the shop of the unfeeling tailor, excusing the delinquency of his sick sewing-girl, had incautiously gone up into her chamber with the morning paper, and, in the absence of her mother, had read to the unfortunate girl the terrible proclamation of her shame. The effect was immediate and violent. The fever on her brain came back with renewed intensity, and absolute madness supervened. All day she raved with agonizing incoherency, no medical skill availing to mitigate the violence of the attack. As evening came on, it brought exhaustion of strength, with indications of speedy dissolution. When I reached the bedside, the poor body lay calm and still; but the yet unconquered mind was breaking forth in occasional flashes of consciousness. Suddenly starting up and looking round the group at her bedside, she exclaimed,—
"A thief, mother! I am not a thief!"
Oh, this death-bed—the first that I had ever seen—was awful! But my nervous organization enabled me to witness it without trepidation or alarm. Love, sympathy, regret, and indignation were the only emotions that took possession of my heart. I even held in my own the now almost pulseless hand of this poor victim of a brutal persecution, and felt the lessening current of her innocent life become weaker and weaker. For three long hours—long indeed to me, but far longer to her—we watched and prayed. Suddenly the restlessness of immediate dissolution came over her. Turning to her mother, she again exclaimed, as if perfectly conscious,—
"Dear mother, tell them I was not a thief!"
Oh, it was grievous unto heart-breaking to see and hear all this! But it was the last effort, the last word, the closing scene. I felt the pulsation stop short; I looked into her face; I saw that respiration had ceased; I saw the lustre of the living eye suddenly disappear: her gentle spirit had burst the shackles which detained it here, and winged its flight, we humbly trusted, to a mansion of eternal rest.
Not until then did a single tear come to relieve me. We sat by the poor girl's bedside in weeping silence. No heavier heart went to its pillow that night than mine.