NUMBER ELEVEN--A HOSPITAL STORY.
"Then, sir," said Mrs. Mallet, "if you'll only not look so frightened,
I'll tell you how it was. It is now twenty years ago that I was very
unfortunate. I was not more than thirty years of age, but I was old
enough to have just lost a good husband and a dear little babe; and
then, when I hadn't a sixpence in my pocket, I caught the fever, and
had to go to a hospital. I wasn't used to trouble; for although I was
nothing better than a poor man's child, I had known all my life
nothing but kindness. I never had but one mistress,--my lady, who when
she was the most beautiful young lady in all Devonshire, took me out
of a village school, and raised me to be her maid; and her maid I was
for twelve years--first down in Devonshire, and afterwards up in
London, when she married (somewhat against the will of her family) a
thorough good gentleman, but a poor one, who after a time took her out
to India, where he became a judge, and she a grand lady. My dear
mistress would have taken me out to India with her, only she was then
too poor to pay for my passage out, and bear the expense of me there,
where labour can be got so cheap, and native servants can live on a
handful of rice a day. She, sir, is Lady Burridge--the same who gave
me the money to start in this house with, and whose carriage you saw
yesterday at my door.
"So my mistress went eastward, and I was left behind to marry a young
man I had loved for some few years, and who had served during that
time as clerk to my lady's husband. I was a young woman, and young
women, to the end of the chapter, will think it a brave thing to fall
in love. I thought my sweetheart was a handsomer and cleverer man than
any other of his station in all London. I wonder how many girls have
thought the same of their favourites! I went to church one morning
with a fluttering heart and trembling knees, and came out under the
porch thinking that all my life would ever afterwards be brighter, and
lighter, and sunnier than it had been before. Well! in dancing into
that pretty blunder, I wasn't a bigger fool than lots of others.
"And if a good husband is a great blessing (and she must be a paltry
woman who can say nay to that), I was born to luck; for my husband was
kind, good, and true--his temper was as sweet at home as his manners
were abroad--he was hard-working and clever, sober and devout;
and--though you may laugh at a woman of my age talking so like a
romance--I tell you, sir, that if my life had to come all over again,
I'd rather have the mischance of marrying my dear Richard, that the
good fortune of wedding a luckier man.
"There's no doubt the game turned out ill for me. At first it seemed
as if it would be just otherwise, for my husband had good health,
plenty of work, and sufficient pay; so that, when my little girl came,
her sweet face brought no shadow of anxiety with it, and we hoped she
would be followed in due course by half-a-dozen more. But ere the dear
babe had learned to prattle, a drear change came over the happy
prospect. The fever crept over the gentle darling, and after she had
suffered for a week or more, lying on my arms, God raised her from me
into his happy home, where the beauty of summer reigns for ever, and
the coldness of winter never enters. Richard and I took the body of
our babe to the burial-ground, and saw it covered up in the earth
which by turns gives all we get, and takes away from us all we have;
and as we walked back to our deserted home, arm-in-arm, in the light
of the summer's evening, we talked to each other more solemnly and
tenderly than we had done for many a day. And the next morning he went
back to his work in the office, from which he had absented himself
since our child's death; and I encouraged him to cheer up, and not to
give way to sorrow when I was not nigh to comfort him, but toil
bravely and hopefully, as a man should; and in so advising him, I do
not blush to say that I thought not only of what was best for his
spirits, but also of what our necessity required--for we were only
poor people, not at any time beforehand in the world, and now reduced
by the cost of our little one's illness and funeral; and, sir, in this
hard world we women, most times, have the best of it, for when the
house is full of sorrow, we have little else to do but weep, but the
men have to grieve and toil too.
"But poor Richard could not hold up his head. He came back from work
that day pale and faint, and in the evening he had a chill and a
heat-fit, that let me know the fever which had killed our little one
had passed into him. The next day he could not leave his bed, and the
doctor (a most kind man, who was always making rough jokes in a rough
voice--just to hide his womanliness) said to me, 'If your husband goes
down to his master's chambers in the Temple to-day, he had better stop
at the coffin-maker's, in the corner of Chancery Lane, and leave his
measure.' But Richard's case was not one for a jest, and he rapidly
became worse than the doctor fancied he would be when he made that
light speech. He was ill for six weeks, and then began slowly to mend;
he got on so far as to sit up for two days for half-an-hour while he
had his tea, and we were hoping that soon he would be able to be moved
into the country--to my sister's, whose husband was an engineer at
Stratford; but, suddenly, he had a relapse, and on the morning that
finished the tenth week from his being seized, his arms let go their
hold on my neck--and I was left alone!
"All during my babe's and Richard's long illness my sister Martha had
behaved like a true sister to me. She was my only sister, and, to the
best of my knowledge, the only relation I had in the world--and a good
one she was; from girl to woman her heart always rung out clear like a
bell. She had three young children, but even fear of contagion
reaching them could not keep her from me in my trouble. She kept
making the journey backwards and forwards, at least once a week, in
the carrier's cart; and, though she had no money to spare, she
brought me, with her husband's blessing, presents of wine, and
jellies, and delicate meat, to buy which, I knew right well, she and
her husband and her children must have pinched themselves down to
scanty rations of bread and water. Her hands helped mine to put the
flowers in poor Richard's coffin; she bore me up while I followed it,
pale and trembling, to the grave; and when that horrible day was
coming to an end, and she was about to return home, she took me into
her arms, and covering me with kisses and caressings, and a thousand
gentle sayings, as if I had been a child of her own, instead of her
sister and a grown woman, she made me promise to come down to her at
Stratford at the end of the week, and stay with her till God should
give me strength and spirits and guidance, to work for myself again.
"But that promise was not kept. Next morning the rough-tender doctor
came in, out of his mere goodness, to give me a friendly look, and a
'God speed you,' and found me, too, sickening for an illness. I knew,
sir, he had made the discovery before his lips confessed a word; for
when he had taken my wrist and felt my pulse, and looked up into my
worn face, he turned pale, as if almost frightened, and such a look of
grief came on his eyes and lips that he could not have said plainer,
'My poor woman! my poor woman! what I feared from the beginning, and
prayed God not to permit, has come to pass at last.'
"Then I fairly broke down and cried bitterly; and I told the doctor
how sore afflicted I was--how God had taken my husband and babe from
me--how all my little means had been consumed in the expenses of
nursing--how the little furniture in my rooms would not pay half what
I owed to honest folk--and how, even in my unspeakable wretchedness, I
could not ask the Almighty to take away my life, for I could not rest
in death if I left the world without paying my just debts. Well, sir,
the doctor sate down by me, and said, in his softest and simplest
way:--
"'Come, come, neighbour, don't you frighten yourself. Be calm, and
listen to me. Don't let the thought of debts worry you. What little I
have done in the way of business for your poor child and husband I
never wish to be paid for--so there's your greatest creditor disposed
of. As for the others, they won't trouble you, for I'll undertake to
see that none of them shall think that you have wronged 'em. I wish I
could do more, neighbor; but I ain't a rich man, and I have got a wife
and a regiment of little ones at home, who won't help, in the long
run, to make me richer--although I am sure they'll make me happier.
But now for yourself; you must go to the fever-hospital, to have your
illness out; the physician who'll take care of you there is the
cleverest in all London; and, as he is an old friend of mine, I can
ask him to pay especial attention to you. You'll find it a pleasant,
cheerful place, much more cool and comfortable than your rooms here;
the nurses are all of them good people; and while lying on your bed
there you won't have to fret yourself with thinking how you are to pay
for the doctors, and medicine, and kitchen physic.'
"I was only too thankful to assent to all the doctor said; and
forthwith he fetched a coach, put me into it, and took me off to the
fever-hospital, to which his influence procured me instant
admittance. Without delay I was conveyed to a large and comfortable
bed, which, with another similar bed parallel to it, was placed
against the wall at the end of a long gallery, containing twenty other
beds. The first day of my hospital life I spent tranquilly enough; the
languor of extreme exhaustion had soothed me, and my malady had not
robbed me of my senses. So I lay calmly on my couch and watched all
the proceedings and arrangements of the great bed-room. I noticed how
clean and white all the beds looked, and what kindly women the nurses
were; I remarked what a wide space there was down the middle of the
room between the two rows of beds, and again what large intervals
there were between the beds on each side; I observed, too, that over
every bed there was a ventilator set in the wall, and beneath the
ventilator a board, on which was pinned a paper, bearing, in a
filled-up printed form, the number of the bed to which it belonged,
the date when the occupant was admitted to the ward, the names of the
physician and nurse under whose charge she was, the medicine she was
taking, and the diet on which she was put. It made me smile, moreover,
to note how the nurses, when giving physic or nourishment, or
otherwise attending to their charges, would frequently address them by
the numbers on their boards, instead of their names.
"'Nurse, dear,' I asked, with a smile, when my attendant came near me,
'what's my name?'
"'Oh, dear!' said she, looking up at the board which had already been
fixed over my head, 'your name is Number Eleven.'
"It would be hard for me to give you, sir, any notion of how these
words, _Number Eleven_, took possession of my mind. This was the more
strange, because the nurse did not usually call me by them; for she
was a motherly creature, and almost always addressed me as 'poor
dear,' or 'poor child'; and the doctors who had the charge of me spoke
to me as 'friend,' or 'old friend,' or 'neighbor.' But all the same
for that, I always thought of myself as Number Eleven; and ere many
days, if any one had asked me what my name was, I could not for the
life of me have remembered Abigail Mallet, but should have answered
Number Eleven. The patient in the next bed to me was Number
Twenty-two; she was, like myself, a poor woman who had just lost a
husband and child by the fever, and both of us were much struck, and
then drawn to each other, by discovering how we had suffered alike. We
often interchanged a few words during the sorrowful hours of the long,
hot nights, but our whisperings always turned on the same subject.
'Number Eleven,' I used to hear her poor thin lips murmur, 'are you
thinking of your baby, dear?' 'To be sure, darling,' I would answer;
'I am awake, and when I am awake, I am always thinking of her.' Then
most times she would inquire, 'Number Eleven, dear, which do you think
of most--the little one or her father?' Whereto I would reply, 'I
think of both alike, dear, for whenever I look at her, a fair young
angel in heaven--she seems to be lying in her father's arms.' And
after we had conversed so, No. 22 would be quiet for a few minutes;
and often, in the silence of the night, I could at such times hear
that which informed me the poor woman was weeping to herself--in such
a way that she was happier for her tears.
"But my malady progressed unfavourably. Each succeeding night was
worse to endure; and the morning light, instead of bringing
refreshment and hope, only gave to me a dull, gloomy consciousness
that I had passed hours in delirium, and that I was weaker and heavier
in heart, and more unlikely than ever to hold my head up again. They
cut all the hair off my head, and put blisters at the back of my neck;
but the awful weight of sorrow and the gnawing heat kept on my brain
all the same. I could no longer amuse myself with looking at what went
on in the ward; I lost all care for the poor woman who lay in the next
bed; and soon I tossed to and fro, and heeded nothing of the outer
world except the burning, and aching, and thirst, and sleeplessness
that encased me.
"One morning I opened my eyes and saw the doctor standing between me
and No. 22, talking to the nurse. A fit of clearness passed over my
understanding, such as people suffering under fever often experience
for a few seconds, and I heard the physician say softly to the nurses,
'We must be careful and do our best, sister, and leave the rest to
God. They are both very ill; this is now the fourth day since either
of them recognized me. They must have more wine and brandy to help
them through. Here, give me their boards.' On this, the nurse took
down the boards, and handed them, one after the other, to the
physician, and he, taking a pen from a clerk, who always attended him,
wrote his directions on the papers, and handed them back to the nurse.
Having heard and seen all this, I shifted in my bed, and after a few
weak efforts to ponder on my terrible condition, and how awful a thing
it is to die, I fell back into my former state of delirium and
half-consciousness.
"The next distinct memory I have of my illness was when I opened my
eyes and beheld a wooden screen standing between me and the next bed.
My head felt as if it had been put into a closely fitting cap of ice;
but apart from this strange sensation, I was free from pain. My body
was easy, and my mind was tranquil. My nurse was standing at the foot
of my bed, looking towards me with an expression of solemn tenderness;
and by her side was another woman--as I afterwards found out, a new
nurse, unaccustomed to the ways of the hospital.
"'What is that screen there for?' asked the novice.
"My nurse lowered her voice, and answered slowly, 'Number Eleven, poor
soul, is dying; she'll be dead in half an hour; and the screen is
there so that Number Twenty-Two mayn't see her.'
"'Poor soul!' said the novice, 'may God have mercy upon her!'
"They spoke scarcely above a whisper, but I heard them distinctly; and
a solemn gladness, such as I used to feel, when I was a young girl, at
the sound of church music, came over me at learning that I was to die.
Only half an hour, and I should be with baby and Richard in heaven!
Mixed with this thought, too, there was a pleasant memory of those I
had loved and who had loved me--of sister Martha and her husband and
children, of the doctor who had been so good to me and brought me to
the hospital, of my lady in India, of many others; and I silently
prayed the Almighty with my dying heart to protect and bless them.
Then passed through me a fluttering of strange, soft fancies, and it
was revealed to me that I was dead.
"By-and-by the physician came his round of the ward, stepping lightly,
pausing at each bed, speaking softly to nurses and patients, and,
without knowing it, making many a poor woman entertain kinder thoughts
than she had ever meant to cherish of the wealthy and gentle. When he
came to the end of the ward, his handsome face wore a pitiful air, and
it was more by the movement of his lips than by the sound of his mouth
that I knew what passed from him to the nurse.
"'Well, sister, well,' he said, 'she sleeps quietly at last. Poor
thing! I hope and believe the next life will be a fairer one for her
than this has been.'
"'Her sister has been written to,' observed the nurse.
"'Quite right; and how is the other?'
"'Oh, No. 22 is just the same--quite still, not moving at all,
scarcely breathing, sir!'
"'Um!--you must persevere. Possibly she'll pull through. Good-bye,
sister.'
"Late in the evening my sister Martha came. She was dressed in black,
and led with her hand Rhoda, her eldest daughter. Poor Martha was very
pale, and worn, and ill; when she approached the bed on which I lay,
she seemed as if she would faint, and she trembled so painfully that
my kind nurse led her behind the screen, so that she might recover
herself out of my sight. After a few seconds--say two minutes--she
stood again at the foot of my bed--calmer, but with tears in her eyes,
and such a mournful loveliness in her sweet face as I had never seen
before.
"'I shouldn't have known her, nurse,' she said, gazing at me for a
short space and then withdrawing her eyes--'she is so much altered.'
"'Ah, dear!' answered the nurse, 'sickness alters people much--and
death more.'
"'I know it, nurse--I know it. And she looks very calm and
blissful--her face is so full of rest--so full of rest!'
"The nurse fetched some seats, and made Martha and Rhoda sit down side
by side; and then the good woman stood by them, ready to afford them
all comfort in her power.
"'How did she bear her illness?' inquired Martha.
"'Like an angel, dear,' answered the nurse. 'She had a sweet,
grateful, loving temper. Whatever I did for her, even though my duty
compelled me to give her pain, she was never fretful, but always
concealed her anguish and said, "Thank you, dear, thank you, you are
very good; God will reward you for all your goodness"; and as the end
came nigher I often fancied that she had reasonable and happy moments,
for she would fold her hands together, and say scraps of prayers which
children are taught.'
"'Nurse,' replied my sister after a pause, 'she and I were the only
children of our father, and we were left orphans very young. She was
two years older than I, and she always thought for me and did for me
as if she had been my mother. I could fill whole hours with telling
you all the goodness and forbearance and love she displayed to me,
from the time I was little or no bigger than my child here. I was
often wayward and peevish, and gave her many hours of trouble, but
though at times she could be hot to others she never spoke an unkind
word to me. There was no sacrifice that she would not have made for
me; but all the return I ever made was to worry her with my evil
jealous temper. I was continually imagining unchristian things against
her: that she slighted me; that, because she had a mistress who made
much of her, she didn't care for me; that she didn't think my children
fit to be proud of. And I couldn't keep all these foolish thoughts in
my head to myself, but I must needs go and speak them out to her, and
irritate her to quarrel with me. But she always returned smooth words
to my angry ones, and I had never a fit of my unjust temper but she
charmed me out of it, and showed me my error in such a way that I was
reproved, without too much humiliation, and loved her more than ever.
Oh! dear friend, dear good nurse, if you have a sister, don't treat
her, as I did Abigail, with suspicion and wicked passion; for should
you, all the light speeches of your frowardness will return to you,
and lie heavy on your heart when hers shall beat no more.'
"When Martha had said this she cried very bitterly; and as I lay dead
on my bed, and listened to her unfair self-reproaches, I longed to
break the icy bonds that held me, and yearned to clasp her to my
breast. Still, though I could neither move nor utter a sound, it
thrilled me with gladness to see how she loved me.
"'Mother,' said little Rhoda, softly, 'don't cry. We shan't be long
away from Aunt and her baby, for when this life is done we shall go
to them. You know, mother, you told me so last night.'
"It was not permitted to me to hear any more. A colder chill came over
my brain--and, wrapt in unconsciousness and deep stillness, I lay upon
my bed.
"My next recollection is of beholding the gray dawn stream in through
the half-opened windows, and of wondering, amid vague reminiscences of
my previous sensations, how it was that a dead person could take
notice of the world it moved in when alive. It is not enough to say
that my experience of the last repose was pleasant to me; I was
rejoiced and greatly delighted by it. Death, it seemed then, was no
state of cold decay for men to shudder at with affright--but a
condition of tranquility and mental comfort. I continued to muse on
this remarkable discovery for an hour and more, when my favourite
nurse reappeared to relieve the woman who had taken the night-watch,
and approached me.
"'Ah!' she surprised me by saying, as a smile of congratulation
lighted her face, 'then you are alive this morning, dear, and have
your handsome eyes wide open.'
"This in my opinion was a singularly strange and inappropriate
address; but I made no attempt to respond to it, for I knew that I was
dead. and that the dead do not speak.
"'Why, dear heart,' resumed the nurse, kneeling by my side and kissing
me, 'can't you find your tongue? I know by your eyes that you know me;
the glassy stare has left them. Come, do say a word, and say you are
better.'
"Then a suspicion flashed across my brain, and raising my right hand
slightly, I pointed to the bed of No. 22, and asked, 'How is she?--how
is she?'
"'Don't frighten yourself, dear,' answered the nurse, 'she isn't
there. She has been moved. She doesn't have that bed my longer!'
"'Then it is _she_ who is dead, nurse; and all the rest was a dream?
It is she who is dead?'
"'Hush, hush, dear! she has gone to rest--'
"Yes! it was all clear to me. Not I but my unfortunate companion had
died; and in my delirious fancy I had regarded the friends who came to
see her, and convey her to the grave, as my sister Martha and her
little daughter Rhoda. I did not impart to the nurse the delusion of
which I had been the victim; for, as is often the case with the sick,
I was sensitive with regard to the extreme mental sickness into which
I had fallen, and the vagaries of my reason. So I kept my secret to
the best of my power; and having recognised how much better I was, how
the fever had quitted my veins and the weight had left my head, I
thanked God in my heart for all his mercies, and once more cherished a
hope that he might see fit to restore me to health.
"My recovery was rapid. At the end of a fortnight I was moved into the
convalescents' ward, and was fed up with wine and meat in abundance. I
had every reason to be thankful for all the kindness bestowed on me in
the hospital, and all the good effect God permitted that kindness to
have. But one thing troubled me very much and cut me to the quick.
Ever since I had been in the hospital my sister had neither been to
see me, nor sent to inquire after me. It was no very difficult
business to account for her neglect of me. She had her good qualities
(even in the height of my anger I could not deny that), but she was of
a very proud high temper. She could sacrifice anything but her pride
for love of me. I had gone into an hospital, had received public
charity, and she hadn't courage to acknowledge a sister who had sunk
so low as that! But if she was proud so was I; I could be as high and
haughty as she; and, what was more, I would show her that I could be
so! What, to leave her own sister--her only sister--who had worked for
her when she was little, and who had loved her as her own heart! I
would resent it! Perhaps fortune might yet have a turn to make in my
favour; and if so I would in my prosperity remember how I had been
treated in my adversity. I am filled with shame now, when I think on
the revengeful imaginations which followed each other through my
breast. I am thankful that when my animosity was at its height my
sister did not present herself before me; for had she done so, I fear
that, without waiting for an explanation from her, I should have
spoken hasty words that (however much I might have afterwards repented
them, and she forgiven them) would have rendered it impossible for us
to be again the same as we were before. I never mentioned to any
one--nurse or patient--in the convalescent ward, the secret of my
clouded brows, or let out that I had a friend in the world to think of
me or to neglect me. Hour after hour I listened to women and girls and
young children, talking of home pleasures and longing to be quite
well, and dismissed from the confinement of the hospital, and
anticipating the pleasure which their husbands, or mothers, or
sisters, or children, would express at welcoming them again; but I
never gave a word of such gossip; I only hearkened, and compared their
hopes with my desolation, morosely and vindictively. Before I was
declared perfectly restored I got very tired of my imprisonment;
indeed the whole time I was in the convalescent ward my life was
wearisome, and without any of the pleasures which the first days of my
sickness had had. There was only one inmate of the ward to which I was
at first admitted, as yet, amongst the convalescents; none of them
knew me, unless it was by my number--a new one now, for on changing my
ward I had changed my number also. The nurses I didn't like so well as
my first kind attendant; and I couldn't feel charitably, or in any way
as a Christian ought to feel, to the poor people by whom I was
surrounded.
"At length the day came for my discharge. The matron inquired of me
where I was going; but I would not tell her; I would not acknowledge
that I had a sister--partly out of mere perverseness, and partly out
of an angry sense of honour; for I was a country-bred woman, and
attached to the thought of 'going into a hospital' a certain idea of
shame and degradation, such as country people attach to 'going on the
parish', and I was too proud to let folk know that my sister had a
sister in an hospital, when she clearly flinched from having as much
said of her.
"Well, finding I was not in a communicative humour, the matron asked
no more questions; but, giving me a bundle containing a few articles
of wearing apparel, and a small donation of money, bade me farewell;
and without saying half as much in the way of gratitude as I ought to
have said, I walked out from the hospital garden into the wide streets
of London. I did not go straight to my old lodgings, or to the house
of the doctor who had been so kind to me; but I directed my steps to
an inn in Holborn, and took a place in the stage-cart for Stratford.
As I rode slowly to my sister's town I thought within myself how I
should treat her. Somehow my heart had softened a great deal towards
her during the few last days; a good spirit within me had set me
thinking of how she had helped me to nurse my husband and baby--how
she had accompanied me when I followed them to their graves--how she
and her husband had sacrificed themselves so much to assist me in my
trial; and the recollection of these kindnesses and proofs of sisterly
love, I am thankful to know, made me judge Martha much less harshly.
Yes! yes! I would forgive her! She had never offended me before! She
had not wronged me seven times, or seventy times seven, but only
_once_! After all, how much she had done for me! Who was I, that I
should forget all that she had done, and judge her only by what she
had left undone?
"The stage-cart reached Stratford as the afternoon began to close into
evening; and when I alighted from it, I started off at a brisk pace,
and walked to my sister's cottage that stood on the outskirts of the
town. Strange to say, as I got nearer and nearer to her door my angry
feelings became fainter and fainter, and all my loving memories of her
strong affection for me worked so in me that my knees trembled beneath
me, and my eyes were blinded with tears--though, if I had trusted my
deceitful, wicked, malicious tongue to speak, I should still have
declared she was a bad, heartless, worthless, sister.
"I reached the threshold, and paused on the step before it, just to
get my breath and to collect as much courage and presence of mind as
would let Martha know that, though I forgave her, I still was fully
aware she might have acted more nobly. When I knocked, after a few
seconds, little Rhoda's steps pattered down the passage, and opened
the door. Why, the child was in black! What did that mean? Had
anything happened to Martha or her husband, or little Tommy? But
before I could put the question Rhoda turned deadly white, and ran
back into the living-room. In another instant I heard Tommy screaming
at the top of his voice; and in a trice I was in the room, with
Martha's arms flung round my neck, and her dear blessed eyes covering
me with tears.
"She was very ill in appearance; white and haggard, and, like Rhoda
and Tommy, she too was dressed in black. For some minutes she could
not speak a word for sobbing hysterically; but when at last I had
quieted her and kissed Rhoda, and cossetted Tommy till he had left off
screaming, I learnt that the mourning Martha and her children wore was
in my honour. Sure enough Martha had received a notice from the
hospital of my death; and she and Rhoda had not only presented
themselves at the hospital, and seen there a dead body which they
believed to be mine, but they had also, with considerable expense, and
much more loving care, had it interred in the Stratford churchyard,
under the impression that in so doing they were offering me the last
respect which it would be in their power to render me. The worst of
it was that poor Martha had pined and sorrowed so for me that she
seemed likely to fall into some severe illness.
"On inquiry it appeared that the morning when I and No. 22 were so
much worse, and the doctor altered the directions of our boards, the
nurse by mistake put the No. 22 board over my bed, and my board (No.
11) over the bed of the poor woman who had died. The consequence was
that, when the hospital clerk was informed that No. 11 had died, he
wrote to the doctor who placed me in the hospital, informing him of my
death, and the doctor communicated the sad intelligence to my sister.
"The rest of the story you can fill up, sir, for yourself, and without
my assistance you can imagine how it was that, while in a state of
extreme exhaustion, and deeming myself dead, I heard my sister, in a
strong agony of sorrow and self-reproach, say to my nurse, 'Oh, dear
friend--dear good nurse--if you have a sister, don't treat her, as I
did Abigail, with suspicion and wicked passion; for should you, all
the light speeches of your frowardness will return to you, and lie
heavy on your heart when hers shall beat no more.'"