ng on a couch and feeling quite
indisposed. But as soon as I saw him I was frightened out of all
knowledge of myself,--so haggard, so white, so deeply scored with
pain and fatigue was the face, so much more ill he looked than I
ever saw him before. He had walked from the station because he saw
no carriage there, and his brow was streaming with a perfect rain,
so great had been the effort to walk so far.... He needed much to
get home to me, where he could fling off all care of himself and
give way to his feelings, pent up and kept back for so long,
especially since his watch and ward of most excellent, kind Mr.
Ticknor. It relieved him somewhat to break down as he spoke of that
scene.... But he was so weak and weary he could not sit up much, and
lay on the couch nearly all the time in a kind of uneasy somnolency,
not wishing to be read to even, not able to attend or fix his
thoughts at all. On Saturday he unfortunately took cold, and, after
a most restless night, was seized early in the morning with a very
bad stiff neck, which was acutely painful all Sunday. Sunday night,
however, a compress of linen wrung in cold water cured him, with
belladonna. But he slept also most of this morning.... He could as
easily build London as go to the Shakespeare dinner. It tires him so
much to get entirely through his toilet in the morning, that he has
to lie down a long time after it. To-day he walked out on the
grounds, and could not stay ten minutes, because I would not let him
sit down in the wind, and he could not bear any longer exercise. He
has more than lost all he gained by the journey, by the sad event.
From being the nursed and cared for,--early to bed and late to
rise,--led, as it were, by the ever-ready hand of kind Mr. Ticknor,
to become the nurse and night-watcher with all the responsibilities,
with his mighty power of sympathy and his vast apprehension of
suffering in others, and to see death for the first time in a state
so weak as his,--the death also of so valued a friend,--as Mr.
Hawthorne says himself, 'it told upon him' fearfully. There are
lines ploughed on his brow which never were there before.... I have
been up and alert ever since his return, but one day I was obliged,
when he was busy, to run off and lie down for fear I should drop
before his eyes. My head was in such an ag