Happy the man that has such a friend beside him when he comes to die! and unless a friend like Hollingsworth be at hand,—­as most probably there will not,—­he had better make up his mind to die alone.  How many men, I wonder, does one meet with in a lifetime, whom he would choose for his deathbed companions!  At the crisis of my fever I besought Hollingsworth to let nobody else enter the room, but continually to make me sensible of his own presence by a grasp of the hand, a word, a prayer, if he thought good to utter it; and that then he should be the witness how courageously I would encounter the worst.  It still impresses me as almost a matter of regret that I did not die then, when I had tolerably made up my mind to it; for Hollingsworth would have gone with me to the hither verge of life, and have sent his friendly and hopeful accents far over on the other side, while I should be treading the unknown path.  Now, were I to send for him, he would hardly come to my bedside, nor should I depart the easier for his presence.

“You are not going to die, this time,” said he, gravely smiling.  “You know nothing about sickness, and think your case a great deal more desperate than it is.”

“Death should take me while I am in the mood,” replied I, with a little of my customary levity.

“Have you nothing to do in life,” asked Hollingsworth, “that you fancy yourself so ready to leave it?”

“Nothing,” answered I; “nothing that I know of, unless to make pretty verses, and play a part, with Zenobia and the rest of the amateurs, in our pastoral.  It seems but an unsubstantial sort of business, as viewed through a mist of fever.  But, dear Hollingsworth, your own vocation is evidently to be a priest, and to spend your days and nights in helping your fellow creatures to draw peaceful dying breaths.”

“And by which of my qualities,” inquired he, “can you suppose me fitted for this awful ministry?”

“By your tenderness,” I said.  “It seems to me the reflection of God’s own love.”

“And you call me tender!” repeated Hollingsworth thoughtfully.  “I should rather say that the most marked trait in my character is an inflexible severity of purpose.  Mortal man has no right to be so inflexible as it is my nature and necessity to be.”

“I do not believe it,” I replied.

But, in due time, I remembered what he said.

Probably, as Hollingsworth suggested, my disorder was never so serious as, in my ignorance of such matters, I was inclined to consider it.  After so much tragical preparation, it was positively rather mortifying to find myself on the mending hand.