A SUDDEN BEREAVEMENT.
"Awake, my dear child, awake!" These were the words I heard: I started
up, gazing in a bewildered manner into the face of my mother, who had,
with some difficulty, succeeded in arousing me from the sweet, healthful
sleep of childhood. My mother drew nigh to me and whispered, "My dear
Clara, your papa is dying." With a frightened cry, I threw my arms
around her neck, and begged her to tell me what had happened. I was
unable to comprehend the meaning of her words. Since my earliest
recollection, my father had never experienced a day's illness, and so
the reader may be able to form some idea of the shock occasioned by her
words--uttered, as they were, at the hour of midnight. When my mother
had succeeded in soothing me, in some degree, to calmness, she informed
me, in a voice choked with sobs, which, for my sake, she tried to
suppress, that my father had, two hours since, been stricken with
apoplexy, in so severe a form that his life was despaired of. She
further informed me that his attending physician thought he would not
live to see the light of another morning. Well do I remember the nervous
terror with which I clung to my mother as we entered my father's
apartment, and the icy chill which diffused itself over my body, as I
gazed upon the fearfully changed features of my father.
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