was sudden, I
never heard a word, up to this hour. It is by no means improbable that
there was ossification about his heart, for he was a very fit subject
for ossification of any parts that could be ossified. I do not know,
indeed, that a post mortem examination was ever made; the family would
doubtless have opposed it. The uses of the dead to the living are in
general very little thought of.

Such cases of disease are, however, a terrible warning to those who are
following in the path of Gen. Upham. They may or may not come to just
such an end as he did, but of one thing we may be well assured; viz.,
that the wicked do not live out half their days, or, in other words,
that sins against the body, even though committed in ignorance, can
never wholly escape the heaven-appointed penalty of transgression. "The
soul that sins must die." For no physical infraction of God's holy,
physical laws, do we know of any atonement. We may indeed, be thankful
if we find one in the moral world or anywhere else.

CHAPTER XXII.

HE'LL DIE IN THIRTY SIX HOURS.

In the autumn of 1824, while a severe sickness was sweeping over one or
two towns adjacent to that in which I resided, and considerable
apprehension was felt lest the disease should reach us, the wife and
child of my medical teacher, and myself, suddenly sickened in a manner
not greatly dissimilar, and all of us suffered most severely.

It was perfectly natural, in those circumstances, to suspect, as a cause
of our sickness, the prevailing epidemic. And yet the symptoms were so
unlike those of that disease, that all suspicions of this sort were soon
abandoned. Besides, no other persons but ourselves, for many miles
around, had any thing of the kind, either about that time or immediately
afterward. I have said that the symptoms of disease in all three of us
were not dissimilar. There was much congestion of the lungs and some
hemorrhage from their organs, and occasionally slight cough, and in the
end considerable tendency to inflammation of the brain. The last
symptom, however, may have been induced at least, in part, by the large
amount of active medicine we took.

When the news of my own sickness reached my near relatives who resided
only a few miles distant, they were anxious to pay such attention to me
as the nature of the case appeared to require. But they soon tired; and
it was found needful to employ an aged and experienced nurse to take the
general charge, and un