Then went her thoughts sadly to her husband 's grave . If one impatient throb had wronged him in his lifetime , if she had secretly repined because her buoyant youth was imprisoned with his torpid age , if ever while slumbering beside him a treacherous dream had admitted another into her heart , -- yet the sick man had been preparing a revenge which the dead now claimed . On his painful pillow he had cast a spell around her ; his groans and misery had proved more captivating charms than gayety and youthful grace ; in his semblance Disease itself had won the Rosebud for a bride , nor could his death dissolve the nuptials . By that indissoluble bond she had gained a home in every sick-chamber , and nowhere else ; there were her brethren and sisters ; thither her husband summoned her with that voice which had seemed to issue from the grave of Toothaker . At length she recognized her destiny . We have beheld her as the maid , the wife , the widow ; now we see her in a separate and insulated character : she was in all her attributes Nurse Toothaker . And Nurse Toothaker alone , with her own shrivelled lips , could make known her experience in that capacity . What a history might she record of the great sicknesses in which she has gone hand in hand with the exterminating angel ! She remembers when the small-pox hoisted a red banner on almost every house along the street . She has witnessed when the typhus fever swept off a whole household , young and old , all but a lonely mother , who vainly shrieked to follow her last loved one . Where would be Death 's triumph if none lived to weep ? She can speak of strange maladies that have broken out as if spontaneously , but were found to have been imported from foreign lands with rich silks and other merchandise , the costliest portion of the cargo . And once , she recollects , the people died of what was considered a new pestilence , till the doctors traced it to the ancient grave of a young girl who thus caused many deaths a hundred years after her own burial . Strange that such black mischief should lurk in a maiden 's grave ! She loves to tell how strong men fight with fiery fevers , utterly refusing to give up their breath , and how consumptive virgins fade out of the world , scarcely reluctant , as if their lovers were wooing them to a far country . -- Tell us , thou fearful woman ; tell us the death-secrets . Fain would I search out the meaning of words faintly gasped with intermingled sobs and broken sentences half-audibly spoken between earth and the judgment-seat . An awful woman ! She is the patron-saint of young physicians and the bosom-friend of old ones . In the mansions where she enters the inmates provide themselves black garments ; the coffin-maker follows her , and the bell tolls as she comes away from the threshold .
Death himself has met her at so many a bedside that he puts forth his bony hand to greet Nurse XXXXX .
Fain Rosebud Toothaker bosom-friend coffin-maker death-secrets fevers nuptials pestilence years