} WOMAN IN THE CHAMBER OF SICKNESS. BY J. W. CORSON, M. D. Ir is difficult for those who are constantly occupied with the more active duties of life fully to estimate the sufferings of the victim of disease. We may indeed feel a temporary emotion as we clasp the thin hand, listen to his half-whispered recognition, and survey the shrivelled limbs, the ashy-pale features, and the sunken, listless eye; and we naturally contrast these with the attributes of him whom, but a short time previous, we saw with the flushed cheek, the erect form, and the proud step of manly beauty. But we delay not to fathom the more hidden fountains of bitterness. Our feelings are too near akin to the brief, pensive musings with which we gaze on the fallen columns, and sculptured ruins of some splendid edifice. We may see, but we cannot adequately feel. Deep as are the traces of devastation without, they are but signs of unrevealed desolation within. Every sense that once ministered to his pleasure seems now to send a thrill of anguish. The choicest dainties are nauseous to the taste; the softest notes of music are offensive to the ear; and the solitary ray of sunlight that pierces the shutter of his prison is afflictive to the languid eye, and sadly reminds him of the bright world without, which he cannot enjoy. He is completely wretched. There are moments of delicious rest for the galley slave, there is a nightly magic spell when visions of happier scenes make the culprit dreamer for a while forget his chains and his cell; but to the fevered one there comes no sweet, refreshing sleep. His slumber is a delirious forgetfulness that brings no relief. He dreams, perhaps, that he is famishing in a burning desert, a mountain weight is crushing his breast, and an iron band is encircling his head, and he starts into painful consciousness, and finds that he truly has a parched tongue, a constricted chest, and an aching brow. The mind strangely sympathizes with the distresses of its clay tenement. He is tormented with seasons of repining over blasted hopes, regrets for errors past, reflections on the ingratitude of sunshine friends, and all the gloomy forebodings of the uncertain future. As he fails from hour to hour, there is a natural shuddering at the thoughts of death, which an influence from above alone can allay. It is visible in the mingling of despair and agony written upon the pallid features, the faint, hurried questions to the physician, the glazed eye that so attentively watches his ominous face, and the ear that is feebly turned to catch the least suspicious whisper of the attendants. As the fatal messenger is met in the shock of battle, or the devouring flood, he is doubtless less terrible from the suddenness of his approach: but when the marked victim leisurely surveys the monster from a distance, and, like a bird charmed by a serpent, finds all his flutterings and attempts at escape in vain; when the sinking one feels as if his hideous folds were oppressing the breathing, and palsying the limbs, the sensation must be strangely fearful. But by the mercy of Heaven there are drops of sweetness mingled in the bitterest cup of human sorrow. There is a gentle kindred being, so imbued with the tenderest sympathies, that she seems purposely fitted to be the comforter of the lowly laid. No visiter is to them so welcome. No step is so light as hers to the throbbing brain, and no voice so soothing to the heavy heart. Not a pang can escape her keen perception, and not a sigh can elude her delicate sensibility. Watch her as she breathlessly approaches the prostrate sufferer. Observe for a moment how thoughtfully she shuts out the offensive light, sweetens the nauseous draught, moistens his parched lips, and in countless ways which the heart of woman alone can devise, strives to lighten the load of his misery. There is inimitable grace in every movement. With exquisite tenderness her skilful hands adjust the aching limbs. And then how soothingly she laves his burning temples! You may have secretly worshipped at her shrine at the fireside, as under the busy impulses of affection she has striven to make home happy; or admired her easy elegance and fascinating words, as she has lightly moved by your side in the pleasant walk: you may have been charmed by her sweet voice at the twilight hour, as to some cherished lay it has mingled with the harmony of sounding keys or the enchanting strings; or been dazzled by her queenly beauty as she has shone the brightest star of the gay assembly; but you can never have realized the utmost loveliness of woman, till stretched upon a bed of pain, you have gazed upon her face, as in strange pity and love it has beamed upon you during the weary watches of the night, and sometimes feigned a smile to cheer you, while on it there have been still the traces of concealed tears. A beautiful fiction of antiquity has placed a shining monument to weeping woman amid the constellations of heaven, and he over whom she has thus fondly hovered cannot but deem the honor richly merited. She is not only the most able to comfort the distressed, but she is happily the most willing. The duty shares her love. To secure the services of man you commonly appeal to his selfishness or honor, but to enlist the mightiest energies of woman, you have only to move her pity. And for this is required but the faintest sigh, or the most stifled moan. As in some of the convincing experiments of the chemist which produce intense light and heat by merely bringing together bodies previously inert and cold, so to excite the deepest yearnings of the female heart it seems only necessary to place her in contact with suffering. Her kindness appears to be the natural prompting of an amiable instinct, without which she would not be woman. Strangely disinterested, she watches with more endearing constancy over the feeblest infant from whom she expects not the least reward, and who appreciates not her caressing words, and returns not even her smiling look of love, than over afflicted royalty itself. She seems indeed the universal good Samaritan. The sun of civilization may cause this characteristic virtue more luxuriantly to expand, but like a beautiful flower adorning many climes, its fragrance is every where the same. It rescued the fainting Park on the burning sands of Africa, and it assuaged the anguish and inspired the eloquence of our own adventurous Ledyard amid the snows of Siberia; it replenishes the fire that cheers the shivering emigrant in the lonely forest dwelling of the far west; and it feeds the sickly tapers, that, like signals of distress, faintly beam upon you from the curtained windows, here and there as you grope your way, between midnight and dawn, through the populous city. Rank and condition may change the exterior of woman, but they change not her heart. Its generous impulses lead the mistress of the splendid mansion to prefer the offensive sick room to her bed of down, and subject hands unaccustomed to toil, to kindest menial offices; and they bring the fair prisoner of want in the lowest hut of poverty, to cheerfully stint herself to a more scanty meal that she may better provide a cordial for the suffering inmate over whom she affectionately lingers. Go with the physician through flooded streets at the midnight hour, and you will find that, without hope of reward, feeble woman will have preceded him; follow him daily through the wards of the crowded hospital, and you will discover that there are gentler ministering ones who seem fixed to the spot, and constantly to inhale the rank breath of the sick and dying. (To be continued.) 1 "SPURN NOT THE GUILTY," BY CAROLINE M. SAWYER. Scorn not the man whose spirit feels "Twill rouse a demon in his heart Which thou too late wouldst strive to chain, And bid a thousand furies start To life, which ne'er may sleep again. The famished lioness to goad, Than, in his guilt, remorse, despair, But if a soul thou wouldst redeem, With gentlest words, within thine own, Till thou the demon sin dethrone. He is a man, and he will yield, Like snows beneath the torrid ray, And his strong heart, though fiercely steel'd, A mother's kiss upon his cheek, A mother!-ay! and who shall say, Which filled him at that mother's knee? No guilt so utter e'er became But 'mid it we some good might find, Scorn not the guilty, then, but plead Then mercy to the fallen show, That mercy may be shown to thee! } SKETCHES OF THE STAR-LAND; FROM THE DIARY OF A CLAIREVOYANTE. THERE are those, I am told, who deny the truth of Mesmerism. With such I have no mind to enter into any controversy, for it is not my business at the present time to establish principles or to form a theory, since both of these have been already done by abler pens than mine, but simply to relate my experience as a subject of spontaneous Mesmerism. I leave the several gradations through which I passed, and take the reader by one step to the point when I first fell into the state alluded to above. I was alone, walking, in a pleasant and quiet place, on a lovely day in June. The deep scorching noon, that most potent of Mesmerizers, had gone over me, yet still I slept not; though, from the deep and almost breathless silence, it seemed as if Earth had yielded herself, a wonted and willing subject, to the terrible-eyed Sun, and was slumbering so deeply that even the small children that fed upon her bosom might hardly be placed in communication with her. I knew not that the influence which I had marked in others was overwhelming me. I was not sensible of the least drowsiness, but, gradually, even while my eyes were looking upon it, the scene changed. I remember there was a little brook that went jumping along down the slopes, singing like a happy child, and on the opposite bank stood a fine linden. I was sitting leaned against the stem of a tulip-tree in full bloom, and my eyes were continually turning from the splendor of its magnificent flowers to the beautiful heart-shaped leaves and pea-green bracts of the linden, or to the rich and glossy foliage of a small magnolia just beyond, whose swelling buds were tipped with a gleam of snowy whiteness. I remember my attention was fixed by one of these, which seemed near bursting into bloom, and I gazed until my eyes lost the power of motion. Then a single white star, radiating lines of fairest light, shone on a ground of deepest blackness, and all was dark; then, perhaps, there was a period of complete unconsciousness or total absorption of the senses. Beauty in all its loveliest forms was represented in the landscape that surrounded me. It was as if a picture of more than oriental magnificence had been suddenly transformed into actual being, or a dream of paradise made real, while the soul expanded with the continually growing beauty, as if its nurture |