The Manitowoc Tribune

A CHAPTER FROM DREAM LIFE.

S. W. Smith, for many years publisher of this paper, now in Missouri, has lately lost by death one of his household. We find the following article in his paper, the Warsaw Times.

The room is hushed into silence. Only the ticking of the clock disturbs its stillness as you watch the fever stricken one, tossing uneasily upon a bed of pain and restlessness. You watch the flushed face oh! how earnestly, for favorable symptoms, to lift from your heart the load of uncertainty, anxiety and care. Outside, the bright moonlight is resting in loveliness, upon hill and vale, in softened light and deepened shade. You watch through the long hours, hoping against hope, while the nameless dread steals slowly over your heart and presses with mountain weight upon its strings already wrought to their utmost tension. You watch the face of the kind medical attendant for the gleam of hope which confidence in his skill prompts you to encourage, even when the fiat has gone forth, and you know that earthly skill cannot avail. And, as day follows night and night follows day, you encourage the hope which is clouded with despair, and bless the kind hands which relieve the wants of the sufferer, after exhausted nature demands, and will no longer defer its claims for your needed repose. Again the faint tickings of the time-piece, the monotonous sound breaking the stillness with its ominous sounds of dread mournful as the notes of the death watch and you sink into a troubled sleep which is broken with anxiety, and, as the shrill cry of the death stricken rings out, for the first time since the quiet of that deathlike stupor commenced, you spring from the bed with the intuitive knowledge that the final hour has come. How the pleading eyes open and gaze with a loving expression upon your face! How the countenance, until now convulsed with painful agony, changes to seraphic sweetness, as though brushed with the tip of an angel's pinion, and becomes more and yet more beautiful as it is impressed with the signet of death. The breath grows shorter, and you open the door, but still return to gaze with a fearful fascination upon the marble brow, until the casket which held an immortal spirit is all that is left to look upon, and you realize that you are in the presence of the King of Terrors, but find it difficult to believe in the first benumbed state of the mental faculties, that the cold clay before you is destitute of feeling, as of sense and motion. You cannot believe that the tones of endearment which you have been wont to use, fall entirely unheeded upon the dull cold ears, and it is only when you see the loved form encased, by sympathizing friends, in the habiliments of the grave, that you realize the full strength of the blow which has fallen upon you. How your heart yearns for sympathy, and notes each sign of condolence. How your pride melts when the asperities of personal or political opponents are forgotten, or swallowed up in evident desire to mitigate or assuage your grief, by kindly offers of assistance. And as you realize that amid the perils of the hour, the wheels must revolve though they crush your hearts in their course, you feel as did the soldiers upon the battle field of duty, when the artillery wagons crushed out the semblance of humanity from the dead form of a father, a brother, or a son. Standing for the last time beside the coffin of the lost one, and trying to choke back the swelling emotions, how vivid and life-like is the dream of agony; how painfully real is that seeming phantom fiend whose long bony fingers clutch your throat in a stifling grip. How you try to shake off the dread nightmare which settles upon your chest, and how you struggle to awake from the fearful dream that is crushing you down.

Ah, it is no dream that we have tried to picture. It is painfully real to thousands of bleeding hearts, and will bring saddened memories to hundreds who have stood beneath the shadow of the Death Angel's wing. It is the terrible experience which we, during the past week, have shared with thousands of our fellow creatures.

Our youngest boy—the pet of our household—the little prattler whose cheery laugh and winsome glee have lightened so many hours of care: little Ralph, just turning the first yearly point of his existence, was a few weeks since stricken with brain fever, and after intervals of terrible suffering called, as we firmly believe, to a brighter and a happier home than earth could give. Our hearts are saddened, even when the turmoil of political excitement has left us no time for the indulgence of private grief, and the bright teachings of Christian Philosophy tell us that on the watch towers of our existence a truthful sentinel repeats the comforting assurance which soothes and calms the tired soldiers as well as the mariner on life's tempestuous seas, with the familiar warder's call. "All's well, all's well."