mother's
admiration; my very step grew slower, and there were Sundays when I
declined the evening walk, which had been my only recreation, merely
because the happy laugh and continued jests of (my friend) Henry Richards
annoyed and distressed me while contrasted with my own heaviness of heart.
Evening after evening, sometimes through a whole dismal night, I worked at
my melancholy employment; and as my master was poor, and employed no other
journey-man, I worked most commonly alone. Frequently as the heavy hammer
descended, breaking at regular intervals the peaceful silence of night, I
recalled some scene of sorrow and agony that I had witnessed in the day;
and as the echo of some shriek or stifled moan struck in fancy on my ear,
I would pause to wipe the dew from my brow and curse the trade of a
coffin-maker. Every day some fresh cause appeared to arise for loathing my
occupation; whilst all were alike strangers to me in the town where my
master lived, I worked cheerfully and wrote merrily home; but now that I
began to know every one, to be acquainted with the number of members which
composed different families, to hear of their sicknesses and misfortunes;
now that link after link bound me as it were by a spell, to feel for those
round me, and to belong to them, my cheerfulness was over. The mother
turned her eyes from me with a shuddering sigh, and gazed on the dear
circle of little ones as if she sought to penetrate futurity and guess
which of the young things, now rosy in health, was to follow her long lost
and still lamented one. The doting father pressed the arm of his pale
consumptive girl nearer to his heart, as he passed me: friends who were
yet sorrowing for their bereavement, gave up the attempt at cheerfulness,
and relapsed into melancholy silence at my approach. If I attempted (as I
often did at first) to converse gaily with such of the townspeople as were
of my master's rank in life, I was checked by a bitter smile, or a sudden
sigh, which told me that while _I_ was giving way to levity, the thoughts
of my hearers had wandered back to the heavy hours when their houses were
last darkened by the shadow of death. I carried about with me an unceasing
curse; an imaginary barrier separated me from my fellow men. I felt like
an executioner, from whose bloody touch men shrink, not so much from
loathing of the _man_, who is but the instrument of death, as from horror
at the image of that death itself--death, sudden, a