Thus many years she lived as a Sister of Mercy;

frequenting

Lonely and wretched roofs in the crowded lanes of the city,

1290 Where distress and want concealed themselves from the sunlight,

Where disease and sorrow in garrets languished

neglected.

Night after night, when the world was asleep, as the watchman repeated

Loud, through the gusty streets, that all was well in the city,

High at some lonely window he saw the light of her taper.

1295 Day after day, in the gray of the dawn, as slow through the suburbs

Plodded the German farmer, with flowers and fruits for the market,

Met he that meek, pale face, returning home from its watchings.

Then it came to pass that a pestilence fell on the city,

Presaged by wondrous signs, and mostly by flocks of wild pigeons,

1300 Darkening the sun in their flight, with naught in their craws but an acorn.

And, as the tides of the sea arise in the month of

September,

Flooding some silver stream, till it spreads to a

lake in the meadow,

1298. The year 1793 was long remembered as the year when yellow fever was a terrible pestilence in Philadelphia. Charles Brockden Brown made his novel of Arthur Mervyn turn largely apon the incidents of the plague, which drove Brown away from home for a time.

So death flooded life, and, o'erflowing its natural

margin,

Spread to a brackish lake, the silver stream of existence.

1305 Wealth had no power to bribe, nor beauty to charm, the oppressor;

But all perished alike beneath the scourge of his

anger;

Only, alas! the poor, who had neither friends nor attendants,

Crept away to die in the almshouse, home of the

homeless.

Then in the suburbs it stood, in the midst of meadows and woodlands;

1310 Now the city surrounds it; but still, with its gateway and wicket

Meek, in the midst of splendor, its humble walls

seem to echo

Softly the words of the Lord:

always have with you."

"The poor ye

Thither, by night and by day, came the Sister of

Mercy. The dying

Looked up into her face, and thought, indeed, to

behold there

1315 Gleams of celestial light encircle her forehead

with splendor,

Such as the artist paints o'er the brows of saints

and apostles,

Or such as hangs by night o'er a city seen at a

distance.

1308. Philadelphians have identified the old Friends' almsLouse on Walnut Street, now no longer standing, as that in which Evangeline ministered to Gabriel, and so real was the story, hat some even ventured to poi at out the graves of the twe lovers. See Westcott's The Historic Mansions of Philadelphia up. 101, 102.

1320

Unto their eyes it seemed the lamps of the city

celestial,

Into whose shining gates ere long their spirits would enter.

Thus, on a Sabbath morn, through the streets, deserted and silent,

Wending her quiet way, she entered the door of the almshouse.

Sweet on the summer air was the odor of flowers in the garden,

And she paused on her way to gather the fairest among them,

That the dying once more might rejoice in their fragrance and beauty.

1325 Then, as she mounted the stairs to the corridors, cooled by the east-wind,

Distant and soft on her ear fell the chimes from the belfry of Christ Church,

While, intermingled with these, across the meadows were wafted

Sounds of psalms, that were sung by the Swedes in their church at Wicaco.

Soft as descending wings fell the calm of the hour on her spirit;

1330 Something within her said, "At length thy trials are ended;"

1328. The Swedes' church at Wicaco is still standing, the o'dest in the city of Philadelphia, having been begun in 1698. Wicaco is within the city on the banks of the Delaware River. An interesting account of the old church and its historic assetiations will be found in Westcott's book just mentioned, pp. 56-67. Wilson the ornithologist lies buried in the churchyard. adjoining the church.

And, with light in her looks, she entered the chambers of sickness.

Noiselessly moved about the assiduous, careful attendants,

Moistening the feverish lip, and the aching brow, and in silence

Closing the sightless eyes of the dead, and concealing their faces,

1335 Where on their pallets they lay, like drifts of snow by the roadside.

Many a languid head, upraised as Evangeline

entered,

Turned on its pillow of pain to gaze while she passed, for her presence

Fell on their hearts like a ray of the sun on the walls of a prison.

And, as she looked around, she saw how Death,

the consoler,

1340 Laying his hand upon many a heart, had healed it forever.

Many familiar forms had disappeared in the night time;

Vacant their places were, or filled already by

strangers.

Suddenly, as if arrested by fear or a feeling of wonder,

Still she stood, with her colorless lips apart,

while a shudder

1345 Ran through her frame, and, forgotten, the flowerets dropped from her fingers,

And from her eyes and cheeks the light and

bloom of the morning.

Then there escaped from her lips a cry of such terrible anguish,

That the dying heard it, and started up from their pillows.

On the pallet before her was stretched the form of an old man.

1350 Long, and thin, and gray were the locks that shaded his temples;

But, as he lay in the morning light, his face for

a moment

Seemed to assume once more the forms of its earlier manhood;

So are wont to be changed the faces of those who are dying.

Hot and red on his lips still burned the flush of

the fever,

1355 As if life, like the Hebrew, with blood had besprinkled its portals,

That the Angel of Death might see the sign, and

pass over.

Motionless, senseless, dying, he lay, and his spirit exhausted

Seemed to be sinking down through infinite depths in the darkness,

Darkness of slumber and death, forever sinking and sinking.

136c. Then through those realms of shade, in multiplied reverberations,

Heard he that cry of pain, and through the hush that succeeded

Whispered a gentle voice, in accents tender and saint-like,

"Gabriel! O my beloved!" and died away into

silence.

Then he beheld, in a dream, once more the home of his childhood;