Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, September, 1878

"L ippincott'sMagazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, September" is part of a literary magazine published in Philadelphia during the 19th century. This periodical featured original works, essays, and literary criticism from some of the era's most distinguished writers. Among its pages appeared early publications by authors who would become literary legends, including works that first introduced readers to now-classic tales of mystery, social commentary, and human nature. The magazine served as a vital platform for both established and emerging voices in American and British literature.I t was the tenth of November when my accident happened: it was late in February before I again sat up and began to feel once more that I belonged to the world of flesh and blood, and to take in slowly, with unaccustomed mind and ear, sights and sounds outside the monotonous world of pain where I had lived so long that I felt bitterly I had earned the right to die. Few glimpses of light had enlivened the terrible blackness of my cruel experience: they had all come from my mother's smile. Occasionally, for a few moments when I lay with my head upon her breast, I was reinspired with a desire to live; but at most times a settled sense of suffering and gloom cut me off from every sweet source of comfort in life. But after I had sat up once- once parted with the dreary prospect of the chintz and lace which curtained my bed-I was a little stronger. Deep was the silence of the icebound shore that day, sparkling the blue waters across which the sun marked a glittering track. My mother sat beside me, and Helen knelt by my reclining-chair watching my face with eager, earnest eyes, divining every wish and foreseeing all my needs. She served me with such an enthusiasm of devotion that in my morbid state, with every nerve strained to its highest tension, I suffered merely in looking at her. But Dr. Sharpe himself had begged me to let her stay with me, because she fretted so when away from me. I had but one