In the great scarcity of help, he used
frequently to receive the sick and dying at the gate, assist in
carrying them to their beds, nurse them, receive their last messages,
watch for their last breath, and then, wrapping them in the sheet they
had died upon, carry them out to the burial-ground, and place them in
the trench. He had a vivid recollection of the difficulty of finding
any kind of fabric in which to wrap the dead, when the vast number of
interments had exhausted the supply of sheets. "I would put them," he
would say, "in any old rag I could find." If he ever left the
hospital, it was to visit the infected districts, and assist in
removing the sick from the houses in which they were dying without
help. One scene of this kind, witnessed by a merchant, who was
hurrying past with camphored handkerchief pressed to his mouth,
affords us a vivid glimpse of this heroic man engaged in his sublime
vocation. A carriage, rapidly driven by a black man, broke the silence
of the deserted and grass-grown street. It stopped before a frame
house; and the driver, first having bound a handkerchief over his
mouth, opened the door of the carriage, and quickly remounted to the
box.
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