Poor child! thought I, how many an older head might learn wisdom from thee—­how many a luxurious philosopher, who is skilled to preach but not to suffer, might not thy patient words put to the blush!  The manner and language of this child were alike above her years and station; and, indeed, in all cases in which the cares and sorrows of life have anticipated their usual date, and have fallen, as they sometimes do, with melancholy prematurity to the lot of childhood, I have observed the result to have proved uniformly the same.  A young mind, to which joy and indulgence have been strangers, and to which suffering and self-denial have been familiarised from the first, acquires a solidity and an elevation which no other discipline could have bestowed, and which, in the present case, communicated a striking but mournful peculiarity to the manners, even to the voice of the child.  We paused before a narrow, crazy door, which she opened by means of a latch, and we forthwith began to ascend the steep and broken stairs, which led upwards to the sick man’s room.  As we mounted flight after flight towards the garret floor, I heard more and more distinctly the hurried talking of many voices.  I could also distinguish the low sobbing of a female.  On arriving upon the uppermost lobby, these sounds became fully audible.

“This way, your honor,” said my little conductress, at the same time pushing open a door of patched and half rotten plank, she admitted me into the squalid chamber of death and misery.  But one candle, held in the fingers of a scared and haggard-looking child, was burning in the room, and that so dim that all was twilight or darkness except within its immediate influence.  The general obscurity, however, served to throw into prominent and startling relief the death-bed and its occupant.  The light was nearly approximated to, and fell with horrible clearness upon, the blue and swollen features of the drunkard.  I did not think it possible that a human countenance could look so terrific.  The lips were black and drawn apart—­the teeth were firmly set—­the eyes a little unclosed, and nothing but the whites appearing—­every feature was fixed and livid, and the whole face wore a ghastly and rigid expression of despairing terror such as I never saw equalled; his hands were crossed upon his breast, and firmly clenched, while, as if to add to the corpse-like effect of the whole, some white cloths, dipped in water, were wound about the forehead and temples.  As soon as I could remove my eyes from this horrible spectacle, I observed my friend Dr. D——­, one of the most humane of a humane profession, standing by the bedside.  He had been attempting, but unsuccessfully, to bleed the patient, and had now applied his finger to the pulse.

“Is there any hope?” I inquired in a whisper.

A shake of the head was the reply.  There was a pause while he continued to hold the wrist; but he waited in vain for the throb of life, it was not there, and when he let go the hand it fell stiffly back into its former position upon the other.