Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451, page 19 by Various Authors
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e manifestations: for I did watch them, first from my own window, then in the house, in the midst of the lonely family, comforting when I could not aid, and sharing in the griefs I could not lessen. Under the new influence, the boy gained such loveliness and spiritualism, that his face had an angelic character, which, though it made young Jessie feel a strange kind of loving awe for the sick boy, betokened to me, and to his mother, that his end was not far off.
He was now too weak to sit up, excepting for a small part of the day; and I feared that he would soon become too weak to teach, even in his gentle way, and with such a gentle pupil. But the Latin exercises still held their place; the books lying on the sofa instead of on the table, and Jessie sitting by him on a stool, where he could overlook her as she read: this was all the change; unless, indeed, that Jessie read aloud more than formerly, and not always out of a Latin book. Sometimes it was poetry, and sometimes it was the Bible that she read to him; and then he used to stop her, and pour forth such eloquent, such rapturous remarks on what he heard, that Jessie used to sit and watch him like a young angel holding converse with a spirit. She was beginning to love him very deeply in her innocent, girlish, unconscious way; and I used to see her bounding step grow sad and heavy as, day by day, her brother-like tutor seemed to be sinking from earth so fast.
Thus passed the winter, poor Mrs Lawson toiling painfully at her task, and Herbert falling into death in his; but with such happiness in his heart as made his sufferings divine delights, and his weakness, the holy strength of heaven.
He could do but little at his paper-cutting now, but still he persevered; and his toil was well repaid, too, when he gave his mother the scanty payment which he received at the end of the week, and felt that he had done his best--that he had helped her forward--that he was no longer an idler supported by her sorrow--but that he had braced the burden