This ended in convulsive
sobbings and low moanings. Edward felt that he could do no more at
present, and that it would be better if he was left for a time to give
vent to his grief. Edward sat down on a stool by the side of the
orphan, and remained for some time in deep and melancholy thought.
"How strange," thought he at last, "it is, that I should feel so
little as I do now, surrounded by death, compared to what I did when
good old Jacob Armitage died! Then I felt it deeply, and there was an
awe in death. Now I no longer dread it. Is it because I loved the good
old man, and felt that I had lost a friend? No, that can not be the
cause; I may have felt more grief, but not awe or dread. Or is it
because that was the first time that I had seen death, and it is the
first sight of death which occasions awe? or is it because that every
day I have fancied myself on the battle-field, with hundreds lying
dead and wounded around me, in my dreamings? I know not. Poor old
Jacob died peaceably in his bed, like a good Christian and trusting,
after a blameless life, to find mercy through his Savior. Two of these
who are now dead, out of the three, have been, summoned away in the
height of their wickedness, and in the very commission of crime; the
third has been foully murdered, and out of three lying dead, one has
fallen by my own hand, and yet I feel not so much as when I attended
the couch, and listened to the parting words of a dying Christian! I
cannot account for it, or reason why; I only know that it is so, and I
now look upon death unconcerned.
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