nd I speedily became a
skeleton above ground. But, after all, I have many precious
recollections connected with that fit of sickness.

Hollingsworth's more than brotherly attendance gave me inexpressible
comfort. Most men--and certainly I could not always claim to be one of
the exceptions--have a natural indifference, if not an absolutely
hostile feeling, towards those whom disease, or weakness, or calamity
of any kind causes to falter and faint amid the rude jostle of our
selfish existence. The education of Christianity, it is true, the
sympathy of a like experience and the example of women, may soften and,
possibly, subvert this ugly characteristic of our sex; but it is
originally there, and has likewise its analogy in the practice of our
brute brethren, who hunt the sick or disabled member of the herd from
among them, as an enemy. It is for this reason that the stricken deer
goes apart, and the sick lion grimly withdraws himself into his den.
Except in love, or the attachments of kindred, or other very long and
habitual affection, we really have no tenderness. But there was
something of the woman moulded into the great, stalwart frame of
Hollingsworth; nor was he ashamed of it, as men often are of what is
best in them, nor seemed ever to know that there was such a soft place
in his heart. I knew it well, however, at that time, although
afterwards it came nigh to be forgotten. Methought there could not be
two such men alive as Hollingsworth. There never was any blaze of a
fireside that warmed and cheered me, in the down-sinkings and
shiverings of my spirit, so effectually as did the light out of those
eyes, which lay so deep and dark under his shaggy brows.

Happy the man that has such a friend beside him when he comes to die!
and unless a friend like Hollingsworth be at hand,--as most probably
there will not,--he had better make up his mind to die alone. How many
men, I wonder, does one meet with in a lifetime, whom he would choose
for his deathbed companions! At the crisis of my fever I besought
Hollingsworth to let nobody else enter the room, but continually to
make me sensible of his own presence by a grasp of the hand, a word, a
prayer, if he thought good to utter it; and that then he should be the
witness how courageously I would encounter the worst. It still
impresses me as almost a matter of regret that I did not die then, when
I had tolerably made up my mind to it; for Hollingsworth would have
gon