Annie Morton Author:Massachusetts Sabbath School Society Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V. NEW SCENES. A Tear flew by, a prosperous year for Annie and her pupils, when new events occurred which drew her out from her circle of action in... more »to one still more extended. Edward, Benny's brother, had begun to decline rapidly; he could no longer sit in his chair, but was obliged to be supported in bed with pillows. Annie had often, since her first visit, carried him little niceties. It was but seldom she could be induced to enter, so haunted was she by visions of hisemaciated frame. Still, as he grew worse, and was evidently approaching his end, the thought would often suggest itself, Can J not do something more than minister to his bodily wants'? Annie knew he had no one to counsel or warn him. Strange though it was, his grandmother seemed to have grown familiar with death; it seemed to her like an oft-told tale. She regarded it like any other necessity of life, as a thing to which we must' all yield, and had no care for a state of existence beyond it. She buried those she loved, not unfeelingly, but as you would bury a favorite animal. In the decline of years, on the verge of the grave, she seemed heedless of all save physical suffering. It was painful to Annie to feel that it was so; something mustbe done—but what? Surely what? It is no light matter to minister to the dying. She was startled at the thought. The contest between self-distrust and fear was greater than ever, and yet she could not let him pass away, without knowing whither he was going; she decided to visit him, to read to him, by degrees to win his confidence, and try to induce him to see some one better able than herself at such a time to guide him. On the day she usually visited him, she took some nice jelly, of which he was very fond, and a little book also in her hand. Mrs. Towne was surpri...« less