348 DEATH OF YOUNG CUNNINaHAM. 



removed ; but, after some urging on Cunningham's 

 part, the doctor directed him to apply on the follow- 

 ing day, and he would make out his discharge. The 

 mornino; followins^ his attendants found him dead in 

 his bed, without an external sign to show why the 

 spirit had fled. The ph3'sicians, at a loss to account 

 for so sudden and unexpected a termination, held a 

 post-mortem examination upon his body, and finding 

 all the organs free from disease, they gave in as 

 their opinion that he had died from fright. Poor 

 fellow! — his health aboard ship had been almost 

 uninterrupted]}'^ good, and he bade fair to live as 

 long as any of us. But Providence, for His own wise 

 purposes, saw fit to call him away from life to (I 

 trust) a better and happier sphere ; and although in 

 this world he will no more hear the storm whistling 

 through the rigging, or the sudden boom of the tem- 

 pest-tossed ocean, yet I hope that he 



" Shall find pleasant weather, 

 When He who all commands 

 Shall give, to call Life's crew together, 

 The word to pipe all hands." 



This young man was the eldest son of a widow in 

 New Bedford. His father was for years engaged in 

 whaling, and some eight years since, whilst master 

 of the ship Florida, was drowned in the surf, oft' the 

 Island of Rorotongu, in the Pacific Ocean ; and 

 now his poor relict is called upon to weep over the 

 untimely end of her eldest boy, in a foreign hos- 

 pital, unattended by a single friend to soothe his 

 dying-pillow. He whom slie looked upon as the 

 stay of her declining years, like her husband, en- 



