of anything that was going on.  During the forenoon M. tried to get some rest in the sea-chair by the window, while Hatty kept her place by the bed.  Several times Lizzy looked round the room as if in quest of some one.  Hatty perceiving this and guessing what it meant, stepped aside (she was between the bed and the chair so as to intercept the view), when she fixed her eyes upon M. and rested as if she had found what she sought.  Having been up most of the night, I also tried to get a little rest in another room, and later went out in search of a nurse and engaged an excellent one, Mrs. C., who came early in the afternoon.

Notwithstanding my deep anxiety I was deceived by the more favorable symptoms, and did not allow myself, during the day, to think she would not recover.  In the early evening I wrote to A., who was absent in Maine: 

I am sorry to say that your mother had a very trying day yesterday and has been extremely weak and exhausted to-day....  Nervous prostration appears to be the great trouble.  She has rested quietly much of the time to-day and the medicines seem to be doing their work; and in a couple of days, I trust, she may be greatly improved.  You know how these ill-turns upset her and how quickly she often rallies from them.  She is very anxious you should not shorten your visit on her account.

Soon after this letter was written, the whole aspect of the case suddenly changed.  The unfavorable symptoms had returned with renewed violence.  Dr. W. asked her, during one of the paroxysms, about the pain.  She answered that it was not a pain—­it was a distress, an agony.  But from first to last she never uttered a groan—­not during the sharpest paroxysms of distress.  She seemed to say to herself, in the words of two favorite German mottoes, which she had illumined and placed on the wall over her bed, Geduld, Mein Herz! (Patience, My Heart!)—­Stille, Mein Wille! (Still, My Will!) “The patient and uncomplaining manner,” writes Dr. Wyman, “in which the most agonizing pains which it has ever been my lot to witness were borne—­with no repining, no murmur, no fretfulness, but quiet, peaceful submission to endure and suffer—­will not soon be forgotten.”  At eleven o’clock, when the doctor left, I sent the nurse away for a couple of hours rest and took her place by the sick-bed.  Lizzy, who had already begun to feel the effects of the morphine, lay motionless, and breathed somewhat heavily, but not alarmingly so.

Tuesday, Aug. 13th.—­Shortly after one o’clock I called the nurse and, directing her to summon me at once in the event of any change, retired to the green-room for a little rest.  The girls had been persuaded before the doctor left, to throw themselves on their bed.  Everything was quiet until about three o’clock, when Hatty knocked at my door with a message from the nurse.  I hurried down and saw at the first glance as I entered the room, that a great change had taken place.