easons, doctor, you might judge more harshly of
my intelligence than I should like; besides, you would certainly
misinterpret my meaning. Tell me, therefore, in the common course of
such changes as my disease involves, can I live a year? You shake your
head! Be it so. Six months?--Three, then?--Have I three? The winter,
you say, is to be feared. I know it. Well, then, shall I own that
my convictions anticipate you at each negative? I feel I have not a
month--nay, not half of one--a week will do it, doctor; and now excuse
scant ceremony, and leave me."

Alone--friendless--homeless--ruined, and dying! Sad words to write, each
of them; sadder when thus brought in brotherhood together. The world
and its pageants are passing fast by me, like the eddies of that stream
which flows beneath my window. I catch but one glimpse and they are
gone, beneath the dark bridge of Death, to mingle in the vast ocean of
Eternity.

How strange to see the whole business of the world going on, the moving
multitude, the tumult of active minds and bodies,--at the very moment
when the creeping chill of ebbing life tells of days and hours numbered!

I am alone--not one to sit by me to combat thoughts that with the
faintest help I could resist, but which unaided are too strong for me.
In this window-seat where now I rest, who shall sit this day week? The
youth, perhaps, in gushing pride of heart and buoyancy, now entering
upon life, ardent and high-souled--or the young bride, gazing on that
same river that now I watch, and reading in its circles wreathed smiles
of happy promise. Oh, may no memories of him, whose tears fall fast now,
haunt the spot and throw their gloom on others!

I am friendless--and yet, which of those I still call friends would I
now wish beside me. To drink of the cup of consolation? I must first
offer my own of misery--nay, it is better to endure alone!

Homeless am I, too--and this, indeed, I feel bitterly. Old familiar
objects, associated with ties of affection, bound up with memories of
friends, are meet companions for the twilight hours of life. I long to
be back in my own chosen room--the little library, looking out on the
avenue of old beeches leading to the lake, and the village spire rising
amid the dark yew-trees. There was a spot there, too, I had often
fancied--when I close my eyes I think I see it still--a little declivity
of the ground beneath a large old elm, where a single tomb stood
surrounded by an iron ra