Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/70

60 stop her studying!" Armed with such authority, I should have done it, and how do we know but she might have been with us now if I had done so?

But, she worked on till the 25th of December. Then she came home, and said decidedly she would study no more till she was well.

We were rejoiced at her decision; for, although we were anxious that her education should be completed and thorough, we had felt for a long time that her health was becoming impaired. Still we were sure she had a good constitution, and thought that would carry her through. She did not grow thin, but stout and pale, and such a transparent pallor, that, now I think of it, I wonder all who looked at her did not see that her blood was turning to water. Her sweet and lovely soul was so uncomplaining, and her smile always so bright, that we never for a moment thought she could fade and die.

She brightened up somewhat for the next month, but still did not "get well." About the last of January her limbs swelled so much that, in haste, I rushed to the doctor. Then he said her kidneys were congested, and that Bright's fatal disease was her malady. All that despairing love could do was done now. In five short weeks we laid her in Greenwood. Whatever was the form of the disease from which she suffered, I am convinced that what she did have was brought on by incessant study when she should have rested, and that it was fixed at the time that she got the severe chills—in May, 1871.

She was by no means a frail girl when she entered the institute. She was tall, finely formed, with a full, broad chest, and musical organs of great compass. Her bust was not flat, neither was it as full as it might have been. Her features were not too large. She had brown eyes, brown hair, a very sweet and pleasing face. With every indication at first of strength and a good constitution, she fell at last a victim to want of sense in parents and teachers, and—shall I say?—physician too.

 

HE functional contrast between the two organic worlds of plants and animals was, till lately, the groundwork of all scientific speculations. The labors of the most illustrious men of science had confirmed this theory; and then, too, it was in accord with all the known facts.

Plants, it was held, grow in order to supply animals with food, and to make life possible for them; the activities of vegetal life produced 