Little Rachel died. The father dug her grave near by their humble dwelling; he made the rough coffin in which they enclosed her; and then bore out the body and laid it in the ground, while the weeping mother stood by his side. Sole mourners were they at these sad funereal rites. No holy words from the book of consolation were read, no solemn hymn was sung—all was silence, heart-oppressing silence.
On the succeeding day Parker had to go for the physician again. His next child was taken sick. His wife was far from being well, and he felt strangely. After the doctor had prescribed for the family, and was about leaving, he took Mr. Parker to an eminence overlooking the river that bounded his farm on the western side, and spoke to him thus:
“My friend, do you see that river, with more than half of its muddy bed exposed to the hot sun? Your farm lies upon its eastern side, and the poisonous miasma that arises from its surface and banks is steadily blown upon you by the south-westerly and westerly winds of summer. Is it any wonder that your family have become sick? I wouldn’t live here if you would give me fifty farms like this! Already a whole family have died on this spot, and your’s will be the next if you do not leave immediately. You have lost one child; let that suffice. Flee from this place as hurriedly as Lot fled from Sodom. Medical aid I solemnly believe to be useless while you remain here. The village of A— is healthy. Remove your wife and children there immediately. Do not wait for a single day. It is the only hope for their lives.”
A warning like this was not a thing to be let go by unheeded. Parker promptly announced to his wife what the doctor had communicated, and ended by saying—
“We must go at once.”
“And leave Rachel?” she returned, sadly.
“Our staying here cannot do her any good,” replied the husband, in a choking voice.
“I know—I know,” quickly answered the mother. “I am weak and foolish. Yes—yes—we had better go.”
A few hours sufficed for all needful preparations, and then, with his wife and children in his wagon, Parker mounted one of the horses and drove off for the village of A—, distant a little over ten miles. As they moved away the mother’s eyes were turned back upon the little mound of earth beneath which slept the body of her precious child, and remained fixed upon that one spot until by intervening trees all was hidden from her sight. Then her eyes closed, and she leaned her head down against the side of the wagon, while her arm tightened its hold of the babe that was sleeping on her bosom. For a long time she remained lost to all that was around her. Years afterward she said to a friend that the severest trial of her whole life was in leaving her child alone in that wild, desolate place. It seemed as if the little one must feel the desertion.
At the town of A— Parker and his family obtained accommodations in a poor tavern, where they remained for six weeks, during which time every one suffered more or less severely from fevers, contracted in the poisoned atmosphere in which they had been residing. During the time that Parker remained at A— he obtained more information in regard to Western life, and the prospects of a man like himself getting ahead, as a farmer on wild lands than he had ever before had. He learned, too, some particulars about his own farm, of which he was before ignorant. All along the river upon which it was situated, the fall sickness swept off every new-comer, and was in very many instances fatal to the oldest residents. He was assured that if he went back there to live before frost set in, it would be almost certain death.
The loss of his oldest and best-beloved child; the bad location of his farm; and the new and more correct views he had received on the subject of Western life, completely opened the eyes of Parker to the folly he had committed.
“If I could make any thing like a fair sale of my farm, I think I would let it go, and return to the East,” he said to his wife, after they had all recovered from the worst effect of the fevers from which they had been suffering.
“If you could do as well at the East, Benjamin, I think we would all be happier there,” Rachel replied, in her usual quiet way. Her husband did not notice that the tears sprang instantly to her eyes, nor did he know with what a quick throb her heart answered to his words.
A short time after this, Parker was fortunate enough to meet with a purchaser for his land, who was willing to take it with all its improvements at government price. With seven hundred dollars, the remnant of his property, after an absence of eight months, Parker returned to the East a wiser man, and his wife a more thoughtful, pensive, absent-minded woman. The loss of little Rachel was a sad thing for her. She could not get over it. It would have been some comfort to her if they could have brought back the child’s remains, and buried them where her mother had slept for years, and where the body of her father had been so recently laid; but to leave her alone in the wild region where they had buried her, was something of which she could not think without a pang.
On the small sum of money which he had brought back from his western adventure, Parker recommenced his old business in the very town where he lived, and in the store that he occupied at the time of his marriage. As his means were more contracted, he could not do as good a business as the one he had been so foolish as to give up several years before, and he soon fell into his old habit of complaining and perhaps now with more cause. To such complaints his meek-tempered wife would reply in some words of encouragement and comfort, as—
“You do the best you can, and that is as much as can be expected of any one. You plant and sow—the Lord must send the rain and the sunshine.”
Back in the old place and among her loving sisters, the heart of Mrs. Parker felt once more the warm sunshine upon it—the gentle dews and the refreshing rain. But a year or two only elapsed before her husband determined to seek some better fortune in another place. Without a complaining word his wife went with him, but her cheek grew paler and thinner afterward, her step slower and her voice even to the ear of her husband sadder. But he was too much absorbed in his efforts to get along in the world to be able to see clearly the true condition of his wife, or, if he at all understood it, to be aware of the cause.
Their new location proved to be an unhealthy one, and the loss of another child drove them away, after a residence of a year. Mrs. Parker suffered here severely from intermittent fever. She was just able to go about when her husband declared his intention to leave the place on account of its being sickly.
“Where do you think of going?” she asked, raising to his her large pensive eyes.
“I have hardly made up my mind yet,” he replied. “But I was thinking of R—.”
Rachel’s eyes fell to the floor, and a gentle sigh escaped from her bosom. This was noticed by her husband.
“Have you any objection to R—?” he asked.
“Why not go back to the old place?” Rachel ventured to say, while her eyes were again fixed upon him, but now earnestly and tearfully.
