e
relation between soul and body, which could terminate only with their
final separation.

With the extension of our business, and the increasing calls upon my
time during my Western journeys, it was three years before I again found
myself in Toledo, with sufficient leisure to repeat my visit. I had
some difficulty in finding the little frame house; for, although it
was unaltered in every respect, a number of stately brick "villas" had
sprung up around it and quite disguised the locality. The door was
opened by the same little black-eyed woman, with the addition of four
artificial teeth, which were altogether too large and loose. They were
attached by plated hooks to her eye-teeth, and moved up and down when
she spoke.

"Is Rachel Emmons at home?" I asked.

The woman stared at me in evident surprise.

"She's dead," said she, at last, and then added,--"let's see,--ain't you
the gentleman that called here, some three or four years ago?"

"Yes", said I, entering the room; "I should like to hear about her
death."

"Well,--_'twas_ rather queer. She was failin' when you was here. After
that she got softer and weaker-like, an' didn't have her deathlike
wearin' sleeps so often, but she went just as fast for all that. The
doctor said 'twas heart-disease, and the nerves was gone, too; so he
only giv' her morphy, and sometimes pills, but he knowed she'd no chance
from the first. 'Twas a year ago last May when she died. She'd been
confined to her bed about a week, but I'd no thought of her goin' so
soon. I was settin' up with her, and 'twas a little past midnight,
maybe. She'd been layin' like dead awhile, an' I was thinkin' I could
snatch a nap before she woke. All't onst she riz right up in bed, with
her eyes wide open, an' her face lookin' real happy, an' called out,
loud and strong,--'Farewell, Eber Nicholson! farewell! I've come for the
last time! There's peace for me in heaven, an' peace for you on earth!
Farewell! farewell!' Then she dropped back on the piller, stone-dead.
She'd expected it, 't seems, and got the doctor to write her will. She
left me this house and lot,--I'm her second cousin on the mother's
side,--but all her money in the Savin's Bank, six hundred and
seventy-nine dollars and a half, to Eber Nicholson. The doctor writ
out to Illinois, an' found he'd gone to Kansas, a year before. So the
money's in bank yit; but I s'pose he'll git it, some time or other."

As I returned to the hotel, conscious of a