Devotions upon Emergent Occasions is a 1624 prose wo rk by the English writer John Donne, who dedicated it to the future King Charles I. It is a series of reflections that were written as Donne recovered from a serious illness, believed to be either typhus or relapsing fever. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the great American author, cunningly, informatively, and entertainingly recounts several stories in Am...