Page:Mary Lamb (Gilchrist 1883).djvu/39

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And waters clear of Reason; and for me

Let this my verse the poor atonement be

My verse, which thou to praise wert e'er inclined

Too highly, and with a partial eye to see

No blemish. Thou to me didst ever show

Kindest affection; and would oft-times lend

An ear to the desponding love-sick lay,

Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay

But ill the mighty debt of love I owe,

Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend.

No sooner was Charles restored to himself than the elder brother John met with a serious accident; and though whilst in health he had carried himself and his earnings to more comfortable quarters, he did not now fail to return and be nursed with anxious solicitude by his brother and sister. This was the last ounce. Mary, worn out with years of nightly as well as daily attendance upon her mother who was now wholly deprived of the use of her limbs, and harassed by a close application to needlework to help her in which she had been obliged to take a young apprentice, was at last strained beyond the utmost pitch of physical endurance, "worn down to a state of extreme nervous misery." About the middle of September, she being then thirty-two years old, her family observed some symptoms of insanity in her which had so much increased by the 21st that her brother early in the morning went to Dr. Pitcairn who unhappily was out. On the afternoon of that day, seized with a sudden attack of frenzy, she snatched a knife from the table and pursued the young apprentice round the room when her mother interposing received a fatal stab and died instantly. Mary was totally unconscious of what she had done, Aunt Hetty fainted with terror, the father was too feeble in mind for any but a confused and transient impression; it was Charles alone who confronted all the anguish