Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/49

Rh down, and had no time to leave. In their sore sickness they had no help, no aid, no physician, and their eyes were closed in death; without help of any kind they entered that bourne from whence no traveler ever returns. In their agony and helplessness many of those who had laudanum and morphine took it, and slept themselves away.

I learned, by those who were there helping to nurse the sick, that it was one of the gloomiest nights ever witnessed on earth. They had few lights, and even those seemed to glimmer away; it appeared as if they could not burn brightly amid so much misery, where nothing was heard but groans and sighs of agony. Bells were rung, but there was no one to answer them. The sick had to take care of the sick, and the dying to bury the dead.

The proprietor and his family fled, taking with them all the medicines, leaving nothing, nor even letting the boarders know they were going. As I before said, many ladies were there whose husbands were gone, and many who had some member of their family sick, and could not leave them.

One circumstance occurred, the remembrance of which is horrible to me. To this day I shudder to think of it. A lady was left at Drennon by her husband, who had gone to Lexington to buy some land, she got so frightened she left in the care of a gentleman and went to Louisville. Her husband came for her, and, not finding her at Drennon's, he went on to Louisville. On his going up the hotel stairs, he met persons bearing down a corpse. His horror and despair on finding it was his wife's remains they were bearing, may be imagined, but can not be described.