And yet it required a personal visit, and the conversation of a couple of hours, to fathom the depths of her woe, to the utmost. For there are secrets of the human heart, with which, of course, no stranger—not even the family physician—should presume to intermeddle; though to these depths, in the case of the half-insane sufferer of whom I am speaking, it was not necessary that I should go, in order to find out what I had all along suspected. Disease had been communicated several years before, of a kind which was much more communicable then, than it was eradicable now.
Whenever, by the laws of hereditary descent, in their application to health and disease, our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren suffer, we may recognize in it the hand of the great Creator; nor do we doubt, often, the wisdom of such laws nor their ultimate tendency to work out final good. But when we find a widow suffering many long years, from a disease to which a husband's weakness and wickedness has subjected her, what shall we say, especially when we have reason to fear that the evils in question, some of them, at least, will be terminable only, in their effects, with life itself?
My patient is patiently wearing out her ills; and what she cannot wear out, she is learning to endure. Her case cannot be reached with medicine, at least with safety, and is only to be affected, so far as affected at all, by yielding the most unflinching obedience to the laws of God, physical and moral. She will not die of consumption; she will live on; but how much progress she may be able to make towards the land of life and health, is by no means certain. Her case is, at best, a trying one, and must compel us, whenever we reflect on the subject, to say, "Who hath woe, if not persons situated like this widow?"[J]
FOOTNOTES:
[I] She was not aware that king's evil, or scrofula, is oftentimes the parent of consumption.
[J] Since this chapter was written, I have had the pleasure of learning from a reliable source that the young woman above referred to is now enjoying comparatively good health. She married a second time, a year or two afterwards; and by following out the course prescribed, and with the blessing of Heaven, she came at length to her present position of usefulness and happiness.