The long-wailed dolorous cry filled the streets, empty of their frequenters: "Bring out--bring out your dead!" Again at our home the cry was heard; and I saw my father and others lift up the coarse pine box, with the body of my little sister shut inside, carry it to the window, and toss it into the "dead wagon." And then the wagon rattled away down the street, and again, as it stopped under the window of the next house, over the doomed city rang the weird cry: "Bring out--bring out your dead!"
A few days later another rough pine box was brought to our home. Again I did not understand it; but I knew more of the mystery of death than I had known before. Into this box they placed the body of my little sister Louise. Then we waited for the approach of the "dead wagon." I knew that it would again come to our home, to get its freight of death. I went to the window, and looked up and down the street, and waited. Far in the distance, I heard the cry: "Bring out--bring out your dead!"
The wagon finally arrived. The window was thrown open, the rude box was lifted up, taken to the window, and thrown into the wagon, which was already loaded with similar boxes. They were in great haste, it seemed to me, to be rid of the poor little box. And the carter drove on down the street to other stricken homes, crying: "Bring out--bring out your dead!"
I now began to feel the loss of my sisters. Two had gone. Only one was left with me, my little sister Ellen, as frail and as lovely a flower as ever bloomed. When the next box came, and she, dead of the plague, was put into it, I thought it time for me to interfere. I went to the window and stood guard. Again came the terrible cry: "Bring out--bring out your dead!" And my last little sister was taken away in the "dead wagon."
I was too young to understand it all, but I remember going with my father and mother in the carriage every time they carried one of my sisters to the graveyard.
The next strange thing to happen was the arrival in the house of a box much larger than the others. I did not know what it could be for. The box was very rough looking. It was made of unplaned boards. My nurse told me it was for my mother. Again I took my stand by the window. "Bring out--bring out your dead!" resounded mournfully in the street just below the window where I stood. I looked out, and there was the "dead wagon." It had come for my mother.