The early shattering of Angelina’s nervous system rendered her always exceedingly sensitive to outward impressions.  She could not look upon any form of suffering without, in a measure, feeling it herself; nor could she read or listen to an account of great physical agony without a sensation of faintness which frequently obliged her, at such times, to leave the room and seek relief in the open air.  The first stroke of paralysis occurred the summer after Sarah’s death, and was brought on in a singular manner.  Mr. Weld’s account of the incident and its consequences is thus given:—­

“For weeks she had visited almost daily a distant neighbor, far gone in consumption, whose wife was her dear friend.  One day, over-heated and tired out by work and a long walk in the sun, she passed their house in returning home, too much overdone to call, as she thought to do, and had gone a quarter of a mile toward home, when it occurred to her, Mr. W. may be dying now!  She turned back, and, as she feared, found him dying.  As she sat by his bedside, holding his hand, a sensation never felt before seized her so strongly that she at once attempted to withdraw her hand, but saw that she could not without disturbing the dying man’s last moments.  She sat thus, in exceeding discomfort, half an hour, with that strange feeling creeping up her arm and down her side.

“At last his grasp relaxed, and she left, only able to totter, and upon getting home, she hardly knew how, declined supper, and went at once to bed, saying only, ‘Tired, tired.’  In the morning, when her husband rose, she said, ‘I’ve something to tell you.’  Her tone alarmed him.  ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ she said.  To his anxious question, ’Pray, what is it?’ she said again, ’Now you mustn’t be troubled, I’m not; it’s all for the best.  Something ails my right side, I can’t move hand or foot.  It must be paralysis.  Well, how thankful I should be that I have had the perfect use of all my faculties, limbs, and senses for sixty-eight years!  And now, if they are to be taken from me, I shall have it always to be grateful for that I have had them so long.  Why, I do think I am grateful for this, too.  Come, let us be grateful together.’  Her half-palsied husband could respond only in weakest words to the appeal of his unpalsied wife.  While exulting in the sublime triumph of her spirit over the stroke that felled her, well might he feel abashed, as he did, to find that, in such a strait, he was so poor a help to her who, in all his straits, had been such a help to him.  After a pause she added:  ’Oh, possibly it is only the effect of my being so tired out last night.  Why, it seems to me I was never half so tired.  I wonder if a hard rubbing of your strong hands mightn’t throw it off.’  Long and strongly he plied with friction the parts affected, but no muscle responded.  All seemed dead to volition and motion.  Though thus crippled in a moment, she insisted upon rising, that she might