this
forlorn stranger in his solitude, but she felt the impossibility of
giving any complete expression to them. She thought of Mungo Park in the
African desert, and she envied the poor negress who not only pitied him,
but had the blessed opportunity of helping and consoling him. How near
were these two human creatures, each needing the other! How near in
bodily presence, how far apart in their lives, with a barrier seemingly
impassable between them!

XXIII

THE MEETING OF MAURICE AND EUTHYMIA.

These autumnal fevers, which carry off a large number of our young people
every year, are treacherous and deceptive diseases. Not only are they
liable, as has been mentioned, to various accidental complications which
may prove suddenly fatal, but too often, after convalescence seems to be
established, relapses occur which are more serious than the disease had
appeared to be in its previous course. One morning Dr. Butts found
Maurice worse instead of better, as he had hoped and expected to find
him. Weak as he was, there was every reason to fear the issue of this
return of his threatening symptoms. There was not much to do besides
keeping up the little strength which still remained. It was all needed.

Does the reader of these pages ever think of the work a sick man as much
as a well one has to perform while he is lying on his back and taking
what we call his "rest"? More than a thousand times an hour, between a
hundred and fifty and two hundred thousand times a week, he has to lift
the bars of the cage in which his breathing organs are confined, to save
himself from asphyxia. Rest! There is no rest until the last long sigh
tells those who look upon the dying that the ceaseless daily task, to
rest from which is death, is at last finished. We are all galley-slaves,
pulling at the levers of respiration,--which, rising and falling like so
many oars, drive us across an unfathomable ocean from one unknown shore
to another. No! Never was a galley-slave so chained as we are to these
four and twenty oars, at which we must tug day and night all our life
long.

The doctor could not find any accidental cause to account for this
relapse. It presently occurred to him that there might be some local
source of infection which had brought on the complaint, and was still
keeping up the symptoms which were the ground of alarm. He determined to
remove Maurice to his own house, where he could be sure of pure air, and
where he himself cou