An image should appear at this position in the text. To use the entire page scan as a placeholder, edit this page and replace "{{missing image}}" with "{{raw image|Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/299}}". Otherwise, if you are able to provide the image then please do so. For guidance, see Wikisource:Image guidelines and Help:Adding images. |
CHAPTER XIX.
WAITING FOR DEATH.
"How much the heart may bear, and yet not break!
How much the flesh may suffer, and not die!
I question much if any pain or ache,
Of soul or body, brings our end more nigh.
Though we are sick, and tired, and faint, and worn—
Lo! all things can be borne."
And poor Alice lay ill for weeks,
hovering long between life and
death, and all unconscious of the
bitter woe that was awaiting her
tardy recovery—a woe so vast that even
her loving attendants, having had to pass
through the same terrible experience themselves,
almost hoped she might never awaken
to the consciousness of it, but find her grandmother
in a better world, without the agony
of the parting in this.
But youth is strong, and Alice had a good constitution, and she rallied at last; but oh!