The Honest Hour

The shadow of death drew on apace to the sight of all, save the
consumptive, and her semi-imbecile mother. These seemed alike blind
to the fatal symptoms that were more strongly defined with every
passing day.

The paralytic sat in her wheeled chair, in the March
sunshine, at the window of her chamber, and talked droningly of
other times and paltry pleasures to that one of her daughters or
grand-children whose turn it was to minister to her comfort and
amusement, and insisted upon having all the neighborhood news
repeated in her dull ear with wearisome--to the
narrator--amplifications and reiterations, shaking with childish
laughter at the humorous passages, and whimpering at the pathetic.

Rosa cheated time of heaviness by unceasing demands upon her
attendants for service and diversion. Unable to sleep, except at
long intervals, in snatches of fitful dozing, she had a horror of
being alone for an instant, from dusk until dawn; was ingenious in
contrivances to surprise an unwary watcher nodding upon her post;
plenteous and plaintive in lamentations, if the device succeeded.
Fifty times a night her pillows must be shaken, her drink, food, or
medicine given, and after each of these offices had been performed,
occurred the petition: "Now--sit where I can see you whenever I open my eyes! It drives me
crazy to imagine for a moment that I am by myself. I want to be sure
all the while that some living human being is near at hand. I have
such frightful dreams! I awake always with the impression that I am
drowning or suffocating, or floating away into a sea of darkness
alone!"