aid
to be restored to perfect health, than a vessel could be considered
perfectly sound that is full of shot holes, yet her condition was far
enough from being desperate, and was even comparatively excellent. I
left her once more with the tear of gratitude to God on her cheek, and
again, for many long years, neither saw her nor heard from her.

At our next interview she brought with her a gentleman whom she
introduced to me as her husband. The meeting was to me wholly
unexpected, but most happy. She lived in this relation, but without
progeny, a few years more, and then sank in a decline, to rise no more
till the sound of the last trumpet.

Of the particulars of her decline and death, I have never heard a word.
Her scrofulous temperament and tendencies rendered her liable to
numerous diseases of greater or less severity and danger, to some of
which she probably fell a victim. It is, however, by no means impossible
that her numerous cares and anxieties--for she was naturally very
sensitive--may have hastened her exit.

If I have any misgivings in connection with this protracted, but very
interesting case, and consequently any confessions to make, it is with
reference to the point faintly alluded to in a preceding paragraph.
While I honor, as much as any man, the marriage relation,--for it is in
accordance with God's own intention, and is the first institution of
high Heaven for human benefit and happiness,--I must freely confess that
in the present fallen condition of our race, it occasionally happens
that an individual is found unfit for the discharge of its various
duties, as well as for the endurance of some of its peculiar
responsibilities. Such, as I believe, among others, was Mary Benham.

CHAPTER LXII.

FEMALE HEALTH, AND INSANE HOSPITALS.

A female, about thirty-five years of age, and naturally of a melancholic
temperament, was very frequently at my room for the purpose of
conversing with me in regard to her health. Most of her complaints--for
they were numerous--were grafted upon a strongly bilious habit, and were
such as required in the possessor and sufferer, more than an ordinary
measure of attention to the digestive organs and the skin. And yet both
these departments, especially the latter, had been in her case,
hitherto, utterly neglected. To speak plainly, and with some license as
a physiologist, _she had no skin_. It was little more than a mere
wrapper, so far as the great purposes of healt