Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880. Excerpt:... Stk (fads. Early in the summer of 1875 my dear wife, Alice Haselden, who had long been ailing, grew very pale and thin and weak. She had a worn, a weary, an anxious look; but above all my daughter and I were struck by the ghastly pallor. Alice did not complain, for she was not in the habit of complaining. It was manifest, however, that she deeply grieved she had not. strength for her accustomed tasks, some of which were terribly trying for her fragile frame. Month after mouth the feebleness, the emaciation and the paleness, became more and more notable. Heroically after her wont, Alice struggled against a mysterious malady, the characteristics of which were exhaustion and feverish disquietude rather than pain. Rest she obviously needed, and rest from her active nature she was unwilling to take. She would only so far yield as to go to bed sooner than usual; but she persisted in rising early to take her part in household occupations, though it was often too plain that she was unlit to rise at all. At the beginning of December she was attacked by strange shiverings as soon as she got up in the D morning. They could not be ascribed to the coldness of the weather, and they did not seem the result of fever. We sent for a doctor, who told us that my dear wife was suffering from anaemia, and that it would be scarcely an exaggeration to say that she had not a drop of blood in her body. All the winter my dear wife hovered between life and death, and we did not expect her to recover. The doctor, who was extremely attentive and kind, and who displayed much skill, gave her large doses of iron, the chief remedy for anaemia, and as Alice was able to take nourishing food, she gradually, as summer came on, gained a little vigor, though she continued to be an invalid. At...