APPENDIX. 
141 
and amusements on the angel visits of a few kind 
friends, a little worsted work, or a new Quarterly, 
and in the absence or dulness of these, happy 
in the possession of some fresh gathered flowers, 
and in watering and tending a few pots of 
favourite plants, which are to her as friends, and 
whose flourishing progress under her tender care 
offers a melancholy but instructive contrast to 
her own decaying strength. Some mild autumn 
evening her physician makes a later visit than 
usual, the room is faint from the exhalations of 
the flowers, the patient is not so well to-day, he 
wonders that he never noticed that mignionette, 
and those geraniums before, or he never should 
have allowed them to remain so long. Some 
weighty words on oxygen and hydrogen are 
spoken ; her poor pets are banished for ever at 
the word of the man of science, and the most 
innocent and unfailing of her little interests is 
at an end. By the next morning her flowers are 
gone, but the patient is no better ; there is less 
cheerfulness than usual, there is a listless wander- 
ing of the eyes after something that is not there ; 
and the good man is too much of a philosopher 
not to know how the working of the mind will 
act upon the body, and too much of a Christian 
not to prevent the rising evil if he can ; he hears 
with a smile her expression of regret for her 
