Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/92

94 hundreds of her admiring friends, she was stricken down by erysipelas, caught by sitting in the gallery one very cold and damp evening. Her husband had been sick, and she was very anxious to have a letter from him; so she sat out on the gallery watching for a letter. She did not frequent the parlor, as she was never known to be there more than five or ten minutes at a time.

She lay from August till October. Her friends were very kind and attentive to her while the visitors were there. After the season was over she got worse. The house was deserted, and also the cottages, except the two little rooms she occupied, with a little stove in the corner of one of them.

Sometimes friends would come with a few grapes, flowers or other delicacy for her, which would be sent up with the compliments of the sender, and a wish to be allowed to see her. A cold, stern voice would be heard in reply—"Her compliments, and she does not wish to see any person." She had not even the privilege to decide for herself, and we all know in severe sickness the kind hand of a female friend is very soothing. This she had not; she had no attendant but her husband, a man, and a maid servant, and all know servants are far from being the same around a sick bed as those friends endeared by former associations, and who are also in the same circle in life.

Let my readers picture to themselves a hall two or three hundred feet long, where some weeks before there had been hundreds or thousands of people passing to and fro. All is now deserted—the servants turned off. In this immense hall is one solitary candle burning, making darkness the more visible; two