''
``Alas, sir,'' replied she, ``my uncle would be
happy to see you, but------''
At this moment, something was heard within
the apartment like the falling of a plate, or glass,
and immediately after my friend's voice called
angrily and eagerly for his niece. She entered the
room hastily, and so did I. But it was to see a
spectacle, compared with which that of my benefactor
stretched on his bier would have been a
happy one.
The easy-chair filled with cushions, the extended
limbs swathed in flannel, the wide wrapping-gown
and nightcap, showed illness; but the dimmed
eye, once so replete with living fire, the blabber
lip, whose dilation and compression used to give
such character to his animated countenance,---the
stammering tongue, that once poured forth such
floods of masculine eloquence, and had often swayed
the opinion of the sages whom he addressed,---all
these sad symptoms evinced that my friend was in
the melancholy condition of those, in whom the
principle of animal life has unfortunately survived
that of mental intelligence. He gazed a moment at
me, but then seemed insensible of my presence, and
went on---he, once the most courteous and well-bred!
---to babble unintelligible but violent reproaches
against his niece and servant, because he himself
had dropped a teacup in attempting to Place it on
a table at his elbow.
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