What a constant care sate at the side of
the desk and accompanied him! Fever or sickness were lying possibly in
the next room: a sick child might be there, with a wife watching over
it terrified and in prayer: or grief might be bearing him down, and
the cruel mist before the eyes rendering the paper scarce visible as
he wrote on it, and the inexorable necessity drove on the pen. What
man among us has not had nights and hours like these? But to the manly
heart--severe as these pangs are, they are endurable: long as the
night seems, the dawn comes at last, and the wounds heal, and the
fever abates, and rest comes, and you can afford to look back on the
past misery with feelings that are any thing but bitter.
Two or three books for reference, fragments of torn up manuscript,
drawers open, pens and inkstand, lines half visible on the blotting
paper, a bit of sealing wax twisted and bitten and broken into sundry
pieces--such relics as these were about the table, and Pen flung
himself down in George's empty chair--noting things according to his
wont, or in spite of himself.
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