Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/50

52 The hearse was in waiting, and, under the circumstances, he could not even get one look at her he loved so well, and had left so short a time before in the enjoyment of good health and spirits; to find her on his return shrouded and coffined, ready for bearing to her last resting-place, was almost too much for human reason to bear.

There were full forty or fifty deaths occurred in that little place, and only the notice of about a dozen was given. There was neither physician nor coffin within fifteen miles. They had to put up a kind of box, and into that put their dead. The scenes there were heartrending. All around were the sick, and nobody to attend them. Many happy families came there that season with numerous members, and but one or two, it may be, were left. Many husbands and their wives came there from the toil and heat of the city, to spend the summer in quietness and peace; one was taken and the other left; or, in some cases, both were stricken down, and both were carried by strangers and laid in a stranger's grave. All this occurred within a short distance of four of our most populous cities. After this it was found impossible to make a watering-place of Drennon's and they turned it into a military school.