The Way of Transgressors.
“Do not go out to-night, Amanda. The pavements are damp, and the air is loaded with vapor.” “Indeed, mother, I must go.” “Amanda, there is no necessity for your attending this party; but there are very urgent reasons why you should stay at home. Your cough is still troublesome, and a little exposure might give it permanency. You know that from your father you inherit a predisposition to disease of the lungs.” “You only say that to alarm me.” “Not so, my child; I know your constitution, and know how fatally the exposure of a night like this may affect you.” “But I’ll wrap up warmly, and put on my India rubbers.” “A necessary precaution, if you will go out, Amanda. But I wish I could persuade you to be guided by me. You know that the Bible says, the way of transgressors is hard.” “I don’t know how you will apply that to me, mother. I am transgressing no law of divine appointment.” “Be not sure of that, Amanda.” “I do not understand you, mother.” “I will try and make my meaning clear. In our creation, as organized beings, we were so constituted as to bear a certain relation to every thing around us, and our bodily health was made dependent upon this relation. Here then, we have a law of health, which may be called a divine law—for there is nothing good that does not flow from the divine Creator. Violating this law, we become transgressors, and shall certainly prove the way we have chosen to be a hard one.” “Oh, is that all?” said the daughter, looking up with a smile, and breathing more freely. “I’ll risk the consequences of breaking the law you have announced.” “Don’t be so serious, mother. I will wrap up closely and have my feet well protected. There is not the least danger of my taking cold.” “Well, you must do as you please. Still I cannot approve of your going, for I see that there is danger. But you are fully of age, and I will not seek to control you.” So strong was Amanda’s desire to attend a large but select party, that she went, in company with a young man who called for her, notwithstanding the atmosphere was so humid and dense with fog that breathing it became oppressive. At eleven, after having passed an evening of much pleasure, she started for home with her companion. She was so well wrapped up that she did not feel the cold, and her feet were protected from the damp pavement by the impervious India rubbers. “I’m safe home, mother, after all!” she exclaimed with a merry ringing laugh, as she bounded into the chamber where her ever-watchful and interested mother sat awaiting her daughter’s return. “I am glad to see you back, Amanda,” said Mrs. Beaufort kindly, “and hope no ill consequences will follow what I must still call a very imprudent act.” “Oh, I’m just as well as ever, and have not taken the least cold. How could I, wrapped up so warm?” Still, on the next morning, unaccountable as it was to Amanda, she was quite hoarse, and was much troubled by a cough occasioned by a slight but constant tickling in her throat. Accompanying these symptoms was a pale anxious face and a general feeling of lassitude. “I feared all this, Amanda,” said her mother, with manifest concern. “It’s only a slight cold, mother. And, anyhow, I don’t believe it was occasioned by going out last night, I was wrapped up so warm.” “What to one is a slight cold, my daughter, is a very serious affair to another; and you are one of those who can never take a slight cold without shocking the whole system.” Amanda tried to make light of this, but every hour she felt worse and worse. Her hoarseness, instead of diminishing, increased, and her cough grew more and more troublesome. Finally, she was compelled to go to bed, and the physician was called in. “Is there any danger?” asked Mrs. Beaufort, with an anxious and troubled countenance, as the physician, after prescribing among other things a stimulating application to the throat externally, was about leaving the house. “Is your daughter subject to these fits of hoarseness, ma’am?” he asked. “Yes, sir, whenever she takes cold.” “And does that frequent irritating cough always attend the recurrence of hoarseness?” “Then, madam, it is but right that you should know, that such results, following a slight cold, indicate a very great tendency to pulmonary or bronchial affections. The predisposition existing, very great care should be taken to prevent all exciting causes.” “But, doctor, how is she now?” was Mrs. Beaufort’s anxious inquiry. “Not dangerous, madam, but still in a condition requiring care and skill to prevent unfavorable consequences.” It was a week before Amanda was able to go about again, and then her pale cheeks, and debilitated frame indicated but too plainly the sad consequences of a single imprudent act. A few weeks after she had become restored apparently to her usual health, as she was dressing one morning to go out, her mother said:— “Your clothes are a great deal too tight, Amanda.” “Oh no, they are not tight at all, mother. Julia Mason laces as tight again. She gets her sister to draw her lacings for her, and she has to pull with all her strength.” “That is wrong in Julia Mason, and yet half the pressure that she can bear would seriously injure you.” “How can that be, mother? I am as healthy as she is.” “I will tell you, Amanda. She has a full, round chest, giving free play to the lungs; while your chest is narrow and flat. Without any compression, the action of your lungs is not so free and healthy as hers would be, laced as tightly as you say she laces. But when to your natural conformation you add artificial pressure, the action of your lungs becomes not only enfeebled, but the unhealthy action induced tends to develop that peculiar form of disease, the predisposition to which you inherit.” “That is only an idea of yours, mother. I am sure I have quite a full chest.” “There you are mistaken. I have noticed this defect, with much anxiety, ever since you were a child; and having had my attention called to it, have frequently made comparisons, and have found that you are remarkably narrow-chested, and what is more, have a tendency to stoop, which still lessens the size of the cavity in which the lungs play.” “Well, mother, my clothes are not tight. Just see here.” Mrs. Beaufort tried her clothes, and found them to be much tighter than in her judgment was good for her health. “You are still unwilling, Amanda, to be governed by your mother, where her wishes come in opposition to your pride or inclinations. I know that you are compressing your chest too much, but you are not willing to yield to my judgment. And yet I prescribe no arbitrary rules, but endeavor to guide you by a rational consideration of true principles. These you will not see; and the consequences that must follow their violation will be the transgressor’s reward.” “Indeed, mother, you are too serious. You are frightened at a shadow. Not one of my friends enjoy better general health than I do.” “And so might the graceful maple say of the sturdy oak in the first years of its existence. But long after the first had been humbled beneath the hand of decay, the other would stand with its roots more firmly imbedded in the earth, and its limbs battling the storms as vigorously as ever.” Amanda made no reply to this, for she was suddenly struck with its force. Still she only pretended to loosen her stays to satisfy her mother, while the lacings remained as tense as ever. It is unnecessary to trace, step by step, the folly of Amanda Beaufort through a series of years—years that caused her mother much painful anxiety—up to her twenty-sixth summer, when, as a wife and mother, she was suffering the penalty of her indiscretion, proving too clearly the truth, that the way of transgressors is hard. In spite of all her mother’s warnings and remonstrances, she had continued to expose herself to the night air in damp weather, to attend parties, and remain at them to a very late hour, and to lace herself so tightly as to seriously retard the healthy action of the vital organs. It was toward the close of one of those calm days in September, when nature seems pausing to note the first few traces of decay which autumn has thrown upon garden, field, and forest, that Mrs. Beaufort, and the husband of her daughter, with a few friends, were gathered in the chamber of their beloved one, to see her die. How sad, how very sad is the death-bed of the young, sinking beneath premature decay! In the passing away of one who has met the storms of life, and battled with them through vigorous maturity, and sinks at last in the course of nature, there is less to pain the feelings. But when the young and beautiful die, with all their tenderest and earliest ties clinging to them—an event so unlooked for, so out of the true order of nature—we can only turn away and weep. We can extract from such an affliction but few thoughts of comfort. All is dreary, and blank, and desolate. “Bring me my children,” the dying mother said, rousing up from a state of partial slumber, with an earnest emphasis, that brought both her mother and husband to her bedside. “What did you want, dear Amanda?” asked the husband, laying his hand gently upon her white forehead, that was damp with the dews of coming dissolution. “My dear babes,” she replied in a changed tone, rising up with an effort. “My Anna and Mary. Who will be a mother to them, when I am laid at rest? Oh, that I could take them with me!” Tears came to the relief of her overwrought feelings, and leaning her head upon her husband, she went and sobbed aloud. The infant was brought in by her mother, and laid in her arms, when she had recovered herself a little. “Oh, my babe! my dear babe!” she said, with tender animation. “I cannot give you up!” And she clasped it to her breast with an energy of affection, while the large drops rolled over her pale cheek. “And Anna, dear little girl! where is my Anna?” she asked. Anna, a beautiful child, a few months past her second birthday, was brought in and lifted up on the bed. “Don’t cry, ma,” said the little thing, seeing the tears upon her mother’s cheeks, “don’t cry; I’ll always be good.” “Heaven bless you and keep you, my child!” the mother sobbed, eagerly kissing the sweet lips that were turned up to hers; and then clasped the child to her bosom in a strong embrace. The children were removed after a time, but the thoughts of the dying mother were still upon them; and with these thoughts were self-reproach, that made her pillow one of thorns. “I now see and feel,” said she, looking up into the face of her mother, “that all my sufferings, and this early death, which will soon be upon me, would have been avoided, if I had only permitted myself to be guided by you. I do not wonder now that my constitution gave way. How could it have been otherwise, and I so strangely regardless of all the laws of health? But, my dear mother, the past is beyond recall; and now I leave to you the dear little ones from whom I must soon part forever.” The lips of the young wife and mother moved feebly, and inarticulate whispers fell faintly from her tongue for some moments, and then she sank to sleep—the sleep of death. Thus, at the age of twenty-six, abused and exhausted nature gave up the struggle; and the mother, who had violated the laws of health, sank to the earth just at the moment when her tenderest and holiest duties called loudest for performance. Who, in this brief sketch, does not recognize familiar features? Amanda Beaufort is but one of a class which has far too many representatives. These are in every town and village, in every street and neighborhood. Why do we see so many pale-faced mothers? Why are our young and lovely females so soon broken down? The answer, in far too many cases, may be found in their early and persevering transgression of the most palpable physiological laws. The violation of these is ever followed, sooner or later, in a greater or less degree, by painful consequences.