Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

82 MY MUSICAL EXPERIENCES
hospital at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning. When
we are there I can get an order for you, and I will, if
you wish it, call here immediately after your dinner-
hour and escort you there. It will indeed cheer poor
P to find that so many kind friends sympathize
with him.'
Accordingly, at two o'clock on the following day, I
was ready dressed so as to set out as soon as Signor
E should arrive. A minute or two after the
horn-, the hall door-bell rang, and Signor E
walked in. So ghastly was his colour, so sorrowful
his expression, that I at once knew that there was
no need for any further questions—no need for any
more planning, any more anxiety, about the future
of poor P . He had been released in the night
in those still hours when even sick watchers grow
drowsy and slumber. No one knew exactly when he
closed his tired eyes, or when that throbbing, un-
quiet heart had ceased to beat. Thinking over the
circumstances of the case, we could not but feel that
it ivas a release. But that no one was near to hold
his hand, and whisper some gentle word of hope, of
consolation, was a thought of deep sadness to all of
us who had taken an interest in the poor fellow.
And even now, after he has lain so long in his lonely
bed, I am only reconciled to that lonely, uncared-for
passing away, when I look beyond, and remember
that the deepest, the most tender human sympathy
ds, when compared with the Divine, but as a feeble
—