It is an awful thing for people of the flimsy, vain, pain-shunning, pleasure-seeking character of Charlie Ferrola, to be taken at times, as such people will be, in the grip of an inexorable power, and held face to face with the sternest, the most awful, the most frightful realities of life.  Charlie Ferrola was one of those whose softness and pitifulness, like that of sentimentalists generally, was only one form of intense selfishness.  The sight of suffering pained him; and his first impulse was to get out of the way of it.  Suffering that he did not see was nothing to him; and, if his wife or children were in any trouble, he would have liked very well to have known nothing about it.

But here he was, by the bedside of this little creature, dying in the agonies of slow suffocation, rolling up its dark, imploring eyes, and lifting its poor little helpless hands; and Charlie Ferrola broke out into the most violent and extravagant demonstrations of grief.

The pale, firm little woman, who had watched all night, and in whose tranquil face a light as if from heaven was beaming, had to assume the care of him, in addition to that of her dying child.  He was another helpless burden on her hands.

There came a day when the house was filled with white flowers, and people came and went, and holy words were spoken; and the fairest flower of all was carried out, to return to the house no more.

“That woman is a most unnatural and peculiar woman!” said Mrs. Follingsbee, who had been most active and patronizing in sending flowers, and attending to the scenic arrangements of the funeral.  “It is just what I always said:  she is a perfect statue; she’s no kind of feeling.  There was Charlie, poor fellow! so sick that he had to go to bed, perfectly overcome, and have somebody to sit up with him; and there was that woman never shed a tear,—­went round attending to every thing, just like a piece of clock-work.  Well, I suppose people are happier for being made so; people that have no sensibility are better fitted to get through the world.  But, gracious me!  I can’t understand such people.  There she stood at the grave, looking so calm, when Charlie was sobbing so that he could hardly hold himself up.  Well, it really wasn’t respectable.  I think, at least, I would keep my veil down, and keep my handkerchief up.  Poor Charlie! he came to me at last; and I gave way.  I was completely broken down, I must confess.  Poor fellow! he told me there was no conceiving his misery.  That baby was the very idol of his soul; all his hopes of life were centred in it.  He really felt tempted to rebel at Providence.  He said that he really could not talk with his wife on the subject.  He could not enter into her submission at all; it seemed to him like a want of feeling.  He said of course it wasn’t her fault that she was made one way and he another.”

In fact, Mr. Charlie Ferrola took to the pink satin boudoir with a more languishing persistency than ever, requiring to be stayed with flagons, and comforted with apples, and receiving sentimental calls of condolence from fair admirers, made aware of the intense poignancy of his grief.  A lovely poem, called “My Withered Blossom,” which appeared in a fashionable magazine shortly after, was the out-come of this experience, and increased the fashionable sympathy to the highest degree.