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and her own and her onn [sic] personal crown, quoting scriptures to the point, until I
was so fascinated with my theme, I felt ready to fly away to the better world myself!
When morning had come, and my patient had fallen into a gentle sleep I softly made
my escape into the dawn. What a sight was mine for a life time! Not a person, not a
sound was abroad. The sun was not yet visible but the whole circuit of Pelham hills
was suffused with a deep wine color, hardly transparent, yet hardly a mist, -- I forgot
sick old women and every bogy [sic], -- even the heaven I had conjured up, -- and just adored! --
Saying over to my self Mri Bronning's [sic] lines from Sunrise at sea, -- "I of't had seen
the dawn light run like red wine through the hills!"
Only once more I watched and was
so scared I I [sic] withdrew from the ministering angels of that day forever. It was a
dreary setting, that last night of watching! A large old fashioned kitlhen [sic], wiht an [sic] enormous
fire place; with and two small bed rooms opening out, was my arena. My charge was a very
old woman slowly recovering; whom I had never seen before who was comfortably fixed in one of the bed rooms. If one
X wants to make a sensitive computation of time, let them only try my position, from
eight to twelve on a still Summer night in the country fifty years ago, -- when all
human life, gradually withdraws and dies utterly away and the tricks of darkness begin
their antics.. The steady talk of the old clock, -- of time and eternity! The wild
scramble racket? of the rats in the wall! Tae [sic] cracking and snapping of the old house
itself, -- the soft scramble in the grass outside the open window, -- of things I could
not name but worse did imagine! And in between such stillneis [sic]! Suddenly a series of
curdling shrieks pierced the darkness, filled the house. It was murder of course. And
frozen with terror, I stiffened. But the sick woman faitly [sic] whispered, "It is my daughter
. She is subject to nightmare. You must wake her quickly". Only a thin partition be-
tween me and those hellish yells! I could not do it, -- but I must! My reputation as a
watcher was at stake. Shaking with fright, I grasped the iron candlestick, the tallow
dripping over my hands, and clutching fingers & bled, to clutch the poor woman who with wide wide staring eyes
was fast in the grips ? of her of her horror. She blessed me for delivering her, -- but
alas! Nobody saved me from the most awful night of my life!
[written in margin:
whom shed never seen]
H bMS Am 1118.95, Box 9
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