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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. 1857 Excerpt:...many crept in unawares. Night after night, Nellie heard the sharp twang of the church bell ringing the villagers to meeting. The first hurried, rattling peal, the regular succession of quick, loud strokes of the clapper, the long, sullen vibrations of the slow tolling, and the final bang, with which the sexton announced his own satisfaction that the job was over. How famiiir.r did these notes become as Nellie sat in the sick room of her dying sister, and how hisepnrablv associated with those hours of watching was, ever afterward, the sound of the Cedarville bell. Why are relations and friends ever blind to the insidious advances of disease, which a proper degree of observation might detect? For months the flower had been fading under their eyes, and they saw it not, till their fears were aroused by this severe and sudden attack. Then consultations were held, plans proposed, means discussed, that were too tardy by a twelvemonth. They would convey her to Charlotte's plantation in the sunny south; she should go to Cuba; the most eminent medical advice in Europe should be consulted; the balmiest atmosphere of France, Italy, or the Mediterranean isles should be tried--alas! all too late! neglectful inattention had suffered the uncomplaining invalid to pass the point of possible recovery. Physicians, now vainly called, shook their heads and pronounced no word of hope. For ten days after Mr. Stryker's visit, Maria was in a burning fever, and either madly delirious, or bewildered in confused wanderings of thought: then the fever subsided; extreme prostration followed, and her mind, never strong or active, seemed incapable of the least exertion. Nellie, the meanwhile, was kept a constant prisoner at the bed-side; her ever cheerful face and voice soothed the patient,...