Perfect rest,
kind care, and genial society were the medicines she needed, but
there was no one to minister to her, and she went blindly on along
the road so many women tread.
She left her bed too soon, fearing to ask too much of the busy
people who had done their best to be neighborly. She returned to her
work when it felt heavy in her feeble hands, for debt made idleness
seem wicked to her conscientious mind. And, worst of all, she fell
back into the bitter, brooding mood which had become habitual to her
since she lived alone. While the tired hands slowly worked, the
weary brain ached and burned with heavy thoughts, vain longings, and
feverish fancies, till things about her sometimes seemed as strange
and spectral as the phantoms that had haunted her half-delirious
sleep. Inexpressibly wretched were the dreary days, the restless
nights, with only pain and labor for companions. The world looked
very dark to her, life seemed an utter failure, God a delusion, and
the long, lonely years before her too hard to be endured.
It is not always want, insanity, or sin that drives women to
desperate deaths; often it is a dreadful loneliness of heart, a
hunger for home and friends, worse than starvation, a bitter sense
of wrong in being denied the tender ties, the pleasant duties, the
sweet rewards that can make the humblest life happy; a rebellious
protest against God, who, when they cry for bread, seems to offer
them a stone.
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