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 Toothaker . She is an awful woman . And oh , is it conceivable that this handmaid of human infirmity and affliction -- so darkly stained , so thoroughly imbued with all that is saddest in the doom of mortals -- can ever again be bright and gladsome even though bathed in the sunshine of eternity ? By her long communion with woe has she not forfeited her inheritance of immortal joy ? Does any germ of bliss survive within her ? Hark ! an eager knocking st Nurse Toothaker 's door . She starts from her drowsy reverie , sets aside the empty tumbler and teaspoon , and lights a lamp at the dim embers of the fire . `` Rap , rap , rap ! ''
again , and she hurries adown the staircase , wondering which of her friends can be at death 's door now , since there is such an earnest messenger at Nurse XXXXX 's .
Toothaker bosom-friend embers fire gladsome judgment-seat patron-saint pestilence virgins years