The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 42, April, 1861

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Various. The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 42, April, 1861

APRIL DAYS

THE PROFESSOR'S STORY

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

BUBBLES

CITIES AND PARKS:

LIFE IN THE IRON-MILLS

THE REIGN OF KING COTTON

GLIMPSES OF GARIBALDI

GARIBALDI AT POMPEII

GARIBALDI AT "THE FRONT."

TWO OR THREE TROUBLES

MARION DALE

CHARLESTON UNDER ARMS

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES

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When Helen returned to Elsie's bedside, it was with a new and still deeper feeling of sympathy, such as the story told by Old Sophy might well awaken. She understood, as never before, the singular fascination and as singular repulsion which she had long felt in Elsie's presence. It had not been without a great effort that she had forced herself to become the almost constant attendant of the sick girl; and now she was learning, but not for the first time, the blessed truth which so many good women have found out for themselves, that the hardest duty bravely performed soon becomes a habit, and tends in due time to transform itself into a pleasure.

The old Doctor was beginning to look graver, in spite of himself. The fever, if such it was, went gently forward, wasting the young girl's powers of resistance from day to day; yet she showed no disposition to take nourishment, and seemed literally to be living on air. It was remarkable that with all this her look was almost natural, and her features were hardly sharpened so as to suggest that her life was burning away. He did not like this, nor various other unobtrusive signs of danger which his practised eye detected. A very small matter might turn the balance which held life and death poised against each other. He surrounded her with precautions, that Nature might have every opportunity of cunningly shifting the weights from the scale of death to the scale of life, as she will often do, if not rudely disturbed or interfered with.

.....

Dudley Venner rose from his chair, folded his arms, and awaited his fate. There was no knowing where to look for safety; and he remembered too well the story of the family that was lost by rushing out of the house, and so hurrying into the very jaws of death.

He had stood thus but for a moment, when he heard the voice of Old Sophy in a wild cry of terror:—

.....