Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source: Google Books
https://books.google.com/books?id=u6olAAAAMAAJ
(the New York Public Library)
A solitary room at midnight: a single wax candle lighted on the table: thestiff dull crimson silken curtains of the bed close drawn: half a dozen phialsand two or three glasses. Is it the chamber of a sick man? He must sleep soundif it be, for there is no noise--not even a breath; and all without is as stillas death. There is awe in the silence; the candle sheds gloom, not light, thedamask hanging sucks up the rays, and gives nothing back: they sink into thedark wood furniture: one could hear a mouse creep over the thick carpet; butthere is no sound! Is it the chamber of the dead? But where is thewatcher?--Away! and what matters it here? No one will come to disturb the rest ofthat couch: no brawling voices, no creaking doors will make vibrate the dullcold ear of death. Watch ye the living! The dead need no watching: the sealedeyes and the clayed ears have sleep that cannot be broken.
But is it the watcher who comes back again through that slowly opening door?No, that is a man; and we give all the more sad and solemn tasks of life towomen. A young man, too, with the broad, free brow gathered into a sad, sternfrown. He comes near the bed; he draws slowly back the curtain, and, with thefaint ray of the single candle streaming in, gazes down upon the sight beneath.There it lies, the clay--animate, breathing, thoughtful, full of feelings,considerations, passions, pangs, not six-and-thirty hours before. But now sosilent, so calm, so powerfully grave: it seems to seize in its very inertnessupon the busy thoughts of others, and chain them down to its own deadlytranquillity.
It is the corpse of a man passed the prime, not yet in the decline, of life.The hair is gray, not white; the skin somewhat wrinkled, but not shrivelled. Thefeatures are fine, but stern; and there is a deep furrow of a frown between theeyebrows, which even the pacifying hand of death has not been able toobliterate. He must have been a hard man, methinks. Yet how the living gazes onthe dead! How earnestly--how tenderly! His eyes, too, fill with tears. There musthave been some kindly act done, some tie of gratitude or affection between thosetwo. It is very often that those who are stern, but just, win regard morelong-enduring, deeper-seated, more intense, than the blandishing, light-mindedman of sweet and hollow courtesies.
The tear overtops the eyelid, and falls upon the dark shooting-jacket; andthen, bending down his head, he presses his lips upon the marble brow. A drop(of the heart's dew) will be found there in the morning; for there is no warmthin that cold forehead to dry it up.
The curtains are closed again; the room is once more vacant of breath. Theimage of human life upon the table, that decreasing taper, gutters down withdroppings like those of a petrifying spring. A spark of fire, like some angrypassion of the h