The Theater: Its Destructive Influence - 1837

I paused and looked with a melancholy earnestness on the emaciated and deathlike features of the dying man, but could not discover a single trace of his once manly countenance. I exerted my imagination to the utmost, to bring to recollection some little incident of our early intimacy with which I could associate the features of the once loved companion of my youth, and those of the ghastly object that lay before me. But I could not—even the faintest trace of what he appeared to be was lost. Could I be mistaken Oh that I had been. again called him by his own familiar name, he again, and for the last time in this world, looked at me; but, O! it was a fearful look | Heaving a deep-drawn deathly sigh, he put out his emaciated and cold hand, and attempted to speak; his voice failed him, he recovered himself and made a second effort, it was a desperate one—"Oh W.." calling me by name, "the theatre, the first fruits of my transgression, is sending my poor lost soul to hell; O ! admonish the the the "—young, he would have said, but his utterance and his breath were simultaneously interrupted by the death gurgle. After several ineffectual attempts to breathe freely, during which he firmly yet insensibly grasped my hand, he gave one long gasp and was no more—his unfettered spirit had forsaken its earthly tenement and fled to regions beyond the grave.