himself full and free respiration only when
the girl was pronounced out of danger.

Out of danger! What a misapplication of words!

From the scene of conflict, at the last flutter of Death's gloomy
mantle, comes the man of medicine; watch in hand, boots a tiptoe, face
grave but triumphant. His voice bids a subdued farewell to the
somberness proper to a probable death-bed, coming up just a note
higher in the scale of solemnities, as it announces to the eager,
trembling, waiting ones,

"_The danger is past!_"

Death, the calm, the restful, the never weary; Death, the friend of
long suffering, and world weariness and despair; Death, the rescuer,
the sometime comforter--has gone away with empty arms and reluctant
tread, and--Life, flushed, triumphant, seizes his rescued subject and
flings her out into the sea of human lives, perchance to alight upon
some tiny green islet or, likelier yet, to buffet about among black
waters, or encounter winds and storms, upheld only by a half-wrecked
raft or floated by a scarce-supporting spar.

And she is out of danger!

Hedged around about by sorrow, assailed by temptation, overshadowed by
sin. And, "the danger is over!"

Buffeted by the waves of adversity; longing for things out of reach;
running after _ignis fatui_ with eager outstretched hands, and
careless, hurrying feet, among pitfalls and snares. And, out of
danger!

Open your eyes, Madeline Payne; lift up your voice in thanksgiving;
you have come back to the world. Back where the sun shines and the dew
falls; where the flowers are shedding their perfume and song birds are
making glad music; where men make merry and women smile; where gold
shapes itself into palaces and fame wreathes crowns for fair and noble
brows; where beauty crowns valor and valor kisses the lips of beauty.
And where the rivers sparkle in the sunlight, and, sometimes, yield up
from their embrace cold, dripping, dead things, that yet bear the
semblance of your kind--all that is left of beings that were once like
you!

Out of danger!

Where want, and poverty, and--God help us!--vice, hide their heads in
dim alleys and under smoky garret roofs. Where beaten mothers and
starving children dare hardly aspire to the pure air and sunlight, the
whole world for them being enshrined in a crust of bread. Where
thieves mount upwards on ladders beaten from pilfered gold, and
command cities and sway nations. Where wantonness laughs and thrives
in gilded cages, a