Chapter 33
A MOTHER TO BE PROUD OF. Old people tell of certain years when typhus fever swept over the country like a pestilence; years that bring back the remembrance of deep sorrow--refusing to be comforted--to many a household; and which those whose beloved passed through the fiery time unscathed, shrink from recalling for great and tremulous was the anxiety--miserable the constant watching for evil symptoms; and beyond the threshold of home a dense cloud of depression hung over society at large. It seemed as if the alarm was proportionate to the previous light-heartedness of fancied security--and indeed it was so; for, since the days of King Belshazzar, the solemn decrees of Doom have ever seemed most terrible when they awe into silence the merry revellers of life. So it was this year to which I
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