SCENES IN THE CABIN AND THE CHURCHYARD.

THE OLD MAN AND HIS DARLINGS.

SOLEMNLY, very solemnly did the tolling bell warn us of our approach to the old churchyard of, long before we emerged in the poor little rustic wagon from the forest road that led to it, from the humble cottage whence we had brought all that remained of the innocent and lovely M. The poor old childless and widowed grandfather rested his aged head on my shoulder, and never since God gave me breath have I felt the awful solemnity of my profession as I did that day. I had been summoned from the city to visit the poor young girl by a medical friend whose confidence I enjoyed from having performed several operations on his patients, and as my practice was then limited, I willingly yielded to my feelings and remained with her till the last sigh escaped her guileless bosom, and with the hand of her only protector on her forehead, she breathed her last at midnight, in the lovely month of June, 1839. Wretchedly poor, she had sustained her poor old grandfather by her labor in a neighboring mill. The terrific force sometimes. attained by the over-wrought machinery, caused a great stone to fly asunder by its centrifugal action, and a fragment striking her on the breast, injured the internal organs so fatally, that she died in spite of the earnest efforts of her excellent physician and his friends. I found him affected even to tears at her bedside as he related to me the case, surrounded with three of his intimate friends, one of them

from a distance of twenty miles, and that, too, his third visit to the house of a pauper! Such acts make us proud of our profession. I made up my mind to remain till all danger was over, or death had rendered our efforts of no further use.

Our poor patient, but sixteen years of age, was a beautiful girl, the child of sorrow and shame. Her mother, a simple country creature, the old man's only daughter, fell a victim to the arts of a village monster, who had been in consequence obliged to leave the town, and was at the time of her death an attendant on a gambling hell in our city. We were now about to place the body of her child by the side of his victim, who sank some years before under the finger of unchristian scorn continually pointed at her by the village righteous, with the precept of Christ before them, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." It was supposed by the medical gentleman who called me, that the extraordinary operation of elevating the breast-bone by means of the trephine, would relieve the terrible oppression of respiration, and afford room for the laboring heart and lungs to resume their natural movements. Her condition, however, was so low, that she expired before we could sufficiently elevate the circulation by wine to continue our efforts. Some spicule of bone were immediately removed on my arrival, but she bore it so ill, that further explorations were omitted till next day: that night she died; but I have no reason whatever to suppose an operation could have relieved her; the blow was too violent, and had doubtless produced injuries internally too serious for nature and art united to overcome.

We are often charged as a body with too light an estimate of religious devotion. I know not, however, where the man can be found in our profession, who could have listened to the prayer of that poor old white-headed man of nearly eighty years, as he knelt in the only room of their little

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