y prevails
about being struck with death. We talked of its origin, its influence,
and its consequences. It had done no good in the world, while it had
been the means, we could not doubt, of indirectly destroying thousands
of valuable lives.

OF ITS ORIGIN.--How came the notion abroad that a person can be struck
with death, so affected that there is no possible return for him, to
life and health? Struck! By whom? Is there a personage, spiritual but
real, that strikes? Is it the Divine Being? Surely not. Is it an arch
enemy? is it Satan himself?

"No day, no glimpse of day, to solve the knot."

The doctor and I had, however, one conjecture concerning it, which, if
it should not instruct the reader, may at least, afford him a little
amusement. It certainly amused us.

You have seen the old-fashioned New England Primer. It has been in
vogue, I believe, a full century; perhaps nearer two centuries. It has
done not a little to give shape to New England character. In its
preliminary pages is a sort of alphabet of couplets, with cuts prefixed
or annexed. One of the couplets reads thus:--

"Youth forward slips,
Death soonest nips."

While at its left, is the representation of a skeleton, armed with a
dagger, and pursuing a youth--a child rather--with the apparent
intention of striking him through. Now I cannot say how this picture may
have affected others, but to my medical teacher and myself, as we
mutually agreed, it always brings up the idea of striking down a youth
or child prematurely, and sending him away to the great congregation of
the dead.

Nor am I quite sure that this representation, innocent as may have been
its intention, has not been the origin of a relentless and cruel
superstition. I know certainly, that my own early notions about being
struck with death, had, somehow or other, a connection with this
picture; and why may it not be so with others?

But the _influence_ and _consequences_ of this superstition must be
adverted to for a moment. I said they affect and have affected
thousands; perhaps I ought to have said millions. Under the confused and
preposterously silly idea that Death, the personification of Satan or
some other demon, has laid hold of the sick or distressed, and that it
would be a sort of useless, not to say sacrilegious, work to oppose, or
attempt to oppose, the grim messenger, we sometimes leave our sick
friends in the greatest extremity, to suffer and perhaps die, when t