The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 62, December, 1862

THE CHARITABLE VISITOR

She carries no flag of fashion, her clothes are but passing plain,
Though she comes from a city palace all jubilant with her reign.
She threads a bewildering alley, with ashes and dust thrown out,
And fighting and cursing children, who mock as she moves about.

Why walk you this way, my lady, in the snow and slippery ice?
These are not the shrines of virtue,—here misery lives, and vice:
Rum helps the heart of starvation to a courage bold and bad;
And women are loud and brawling, while men sit maudlin and mad.

I see in the corner yonder the boy with the broken arm,
And the mother whose blind wrath did it, strange guardian from childish
harm.
That face will grow bright at your coming, but your steward might come
as well,
Or better the Sunday teacher that helped him to read and spell.

Oh! I do not come of my willing, with froward and restless feet;
I have pleasant tasks in my chamber, and friends well-beloved to greet.
To follow the dear Lord Jesus I walk in the storm and snow;
Where I find the trace of His footsteps, there lilies and roses grow.

He said that to give was blessed, more blessed than to receive;
But what could He take, dear angels, of all that we had to give,
Save a little pause of attention, and a little thrill of delight,
When the dead were waked from their slumbers, and the blind recalled to
sight?

Say, the King came forth with the morning, and opened His palace-doors,
Thence flinging His gifts like sunbeams that break upon marble floors;
But the wind with wild pinions caught them, and carried them round
about:
Though I looked till mine eyes were dazzled, I never could make them out.

But He bade me go far and find them, "go seek them with zeal and pain;
The hand is most welcome to me that brings me mine own again;
And those who follow them farthest, with faithful searching and sight,
Are brought with joy to my presence, and sit at my feet all night."

So, hither and thither walking, I gather them broadly cast;
Where yonder young face doth sicken, it may be the best and last.
In no void or vague of duty I come to his aid to-day;
I bring God's love to his bed-side, and carry God's gift away.

MR. AXTELL

PART V.

"Miss Anna! Miss Anna! Doctor Percival is waiting for you," were the opening words of the next day's life. Its bells had had no influence in restoring me to consciousness of existence. I never have liked metallic commanders. Now Jeffy's Ethiopian tones were inspiriting, and to their music I began the mystic march of another day.

Doctor Percival was not out of patience, it seemed, with waiting; for, as I went in, he was so engrossed with a morning paper that he did not even look up, or notice me, until I made myself vocal, and then only to say,—

"Ring for breakfast, Anna; I shall have done by the time it comes."

"It is here, father"; and he dropped the newspaper, turned his chair to the table, leaned his arms upon it, covered his precious face with two thin, quivering hands, and remained thus, whilst I prepared coffee, and lingered as long as possible in the seeming occupation.

Jeffy—and I suspect that the mischievous African designed the act—overturned the coffee in handing it to my father, who is not endowed with the most equable temper ever consigned to mortals; but this morning he did not give Jeffy even a severe look, for his eyes were full of tender pity, such as I had never seen in them in all the past.

"How is your patient?" I asked.

"Better, thank God!" he replied.

"Were you with him all night?"

"Yes, all night. I must go out this morning to see some patients. I'll send up a nurse from the hospital on my way. I don't think the delirium will return before mid-day; can you watch him till then, Anna?"—and he asked with a seeming doubt either of my willingness or my ability, perhaps a mingling of both.

I did not like to recount my serious failures with Miss Axtell, but I answered,—

"I will try."

Before he went, he took me in to the place of my watching. The gentleman was asleep. The housekeeper was quite willing to relinquish her office. The good physician gave me orders concerning the febrifuge to be administered in case of increase of febrile symptoms, and saying that "it wouldn't be long ere some one came to relieve me," he bent over the sleeping patient for an instant, and the next was gone.

I think a half-hour must have fled in silence, when Jeffy stole in, his eyes opening as Chloe's had done not many days agone, when the vision of myself was painted thereon. I upheld a cautionary index, and he was still as a mouse, but like a mouse he proceeded to investigate; he opened a bureau-drawer the least way, and pushing his arm in where my laces were wont to dwell, he drew out, with exultant delight, the wig before mentioned.

"What do you s'pose he wants with this thing'?" whispered Jeffy; and he pointed to the soft, fair masses of curling hair that rested against the pillow.

Jeffy was a spoiled boy,—"my doing," everybody said, and it may have been truly. He was Chloe's son, and had inherited her ways and affectionate heart, and for these I forgave him much.

I said, "Hush!"—whereupon he lifted up the wig and deposited it upon the top of his tangled circlets of hair before I could stay him.

I reached out my hand for it, not venturing on words, for fear of disturbing the patient; but Jeffy, with unpardonable wilfulness, danced out of my circuit, and at the same instant the sick man turned his head, and beheld Jeffy in the possession of his property. Jeffy looked very repentant, said in low, deprecatory tones, "I'm sorry," and, depositing the wig in the drawer, hastened to escape, which I know he would not have done but for the disabled condition of the invalid, who could only look his wrath. I had so hoped that he would sleep until some one came; but this unfortunate Jeffy had dissipated my hope, and left me in pitiable dilemma.

In the vain endeavor to restore the scattered influence of Morpheus, I flew to one of the aids of the mystic god, and beseeching its assistance, I prepared to administer the draught. I could not find a spoon on the instant. When I did, I made a mistake in dropping the opiate, and was obliged to commence anew, and all the while that handsome face, with large, pleading eyes in it, held me in painful duress. When I turned towards him and held the glass to his lips, I trembled, as I had not done, even in the church, when Abraham Axtell and I stood before the opened entrance into earth. All the words that I that day had heard in the tower were ringing like clarions in the air, and they shook me with their vibrant forces.

"Am I in heaven?"

It was the same voice that had said to Miss Axtell, "Will you send me out again?" that spake these words.

Was he going into delirium again? I was desirous of keeping him upon our planet, and I said,—

"Oh, no,—they don't need morphine in heaven."

"They need you there, though. You must go now," he said; and he made an effort to take the glass from my hand.

"I have never been in heaven," I said.

"Then they deceive, they deceive, and there isn't any heaven! Oh, what if after all there shouldn't be such a place?"