to them. Your description of the distressed state of the neighborhood is affecting indeed. It is not uncommon for a train of calamities to come together. Fire, sword, pestilence, famine, often keep company and visit a country in a flock.

At this distance I can do no good to you or yours. I pray God to support you. I hope our friends and neighbors are kind as usual. I feel for them in the general calamity. I am so far from thinking you melancholy, that I am charmed with that admirable fortitude and that divine spirit of resignation which appear in your letters. I cannot express the satisfaction it gives me, nor how much it contributes to support me.

28.

J. A.

WEYMOUTH, 1 October, 1775.

Have pity upon me. Have pity upon me, O thou my beloved, for the hand of God presseth me sore.

Yet will I be dumb and silent, and not open my mouth, because Thou, O Lord, hast done it.

How can I tell you (Oh my bursting heart!) that my dear mother has left me? This day, about five o'clock, she left this world for an infinitely better.

After sustaining sixteen days' severe conflict, nature fainted, and she fell asleep. Blessed spirit! where art thou? At times I am almost ready to faint under this severe and heavy stroke, separated from thee, who used to be a comforter to me in affliction; but, blessed be God, his ear is not heavy that He cannot hear, but He has bid us call upon Him in time of trouble.

I know you are a sincere and hearty mourner with me, and will pray for me in my affliction. My poor father, like a firm believer and a good Christian, sets before his children the best of examples of patience and submission. My sisters send their love to you, and are greatly afflicted. You often expressed your anxiety for me when you left me before, surrounded with terrors; but my trouble then was as the small dust in the balance compared to what I have since endured. I hope to be properly mindful of the correcting hand, that I may not be rebuked in anger.

You will pardon and forgive all my wanderings of mind; I cannot be correct.

'Tis a dreadful time with the whole province. Sickness and death are in almost every family. I have no more shocking and terrible idea of any distemper, except the plague, than this.

Almighty God! restrain the pestilence which walketh in darkness and wasteth at noonday, and which has laid in the dust one of the dearest of parents. May the life of the other be lengthened out to his afflicted children.

29.

From your distressed

PORTIA.

13 October, 1775.

I this day received yours of the 1st of October. Amidst all your afflictions, I am rejoiced to find that all along preserve so proper and so happy a temper; that you are sensible "the consolations of religion are the only sure comforters." It is the constitu

you

tion under which we are born, that if we live long

ourselves, we must bury our parents and all our elder relations, and many of those who are younger. I have lost a parent, a child, and a brother, and each of them left a lasting impression on my mind But you and I have many more relations and very good friends to follow to the house appointed for all flesh, or else we must be followed by them. I bewail, more than I can express, the loss of your excellent mother. I mourn the loss of so much purity, and unaffected piety and virtue, to the world. I know of no better character left in it. I grieve for you, and your brother and sisters. I grieve for your father, whose age will need the succor of so excellent a companion. But I grieve for nobody more than my children.

You and I, my dear, have reason, if ever mortals had, to be thoughtful; to look forward beyond the transitory scene. Whatever is preparing for us, let us be prepared to receive. It is time for us to subdue our passions of every kind. The prospect before us is an ocean of uncertainties, in which no pleasing objects appear. We have few hopes, excepting that of preserving our honor and our consciences untainted, and a free Constitution to our country. Let me be sure of these, and, amidst all my weaknesses, I cannot be overcome. With these, I can be happy in extreme poverty, in humble insignificance, may I hope and believe in death. Without them, I should be miserable with a crown upon my head, millions in my coffers, and a gaping, idolizing multitude at my feet.

J. A.

30.

BRAINTREE, 21 October, 1775.

The sickness has abated here and in the neighboring towns. In Boston, I am told, it is very sickly among the inhabitants and the soldiery. By a man, one Haskins, who came out the day before yesterday, I learn that there are but about twenty-five hundred soldiers in town. How many there are at Charlestown, he could not tell. He had been in irons three weeks, some malicious fellow having said that he saw him at the battle of Lexington; but he proved that he was not out of Boston that day, upon which he was released, and went with two other men out in a small boat, under their eye, to fish. They played about near the shore, while catching small fish, till they thought they could possibly reach Dorchester Neck; no sooner were they perceived attempting to escape, than they had twenty cannons discharged at them, but they all happily reached the shore. He says no language can paint the distress of the inhabitants; most of them destitute of wood and of provisions of every kind. The bakers say, unless they have a new supply of wood they cannot bake above one fortnight longer; their biscuit are not above one half the former size; the soldiers are obliged to do very hard duty, and are uneasy to a great degree, many of them declaring they will not continue much longer in such a state, but at all hazards will escape. The inhabitants are desperate,, and contriving means of escape. A floating battery of ours went out two nights ago, and rowed near the town, and then discharged their guns. Some of the balls went into the workhouse, some through the

tents in the Common, and one through the sign of the Lamb Tavern. He says it drove them all out of the Common, men, women, and children screaming, and threw them into the utmost distress; but, very unhappily for us, in the discharge of one of the cannon, the ball not being properly rammed down, it split and killed two men, and wounded seven more, upon which they were obliged to return. He also says that the Tories are much distressed about the fate of Dr. Church,1 and very anxious to obtain him, and would exchange Lovell for him.

This man is so exasperated at the ill usage he has received from them, that he has determined to enlist immediately. They almost starved him whilst he was in irons. He says he hopes it will be in his power to send some of them to heaven for mercy. They are building a fort by the hay-market, and rending down houses for timber to do it with. In the course of the last week, several persons have found means to escape. One of them says it is talked in town that Howe will issue a proclamation, giving liberty to all who will not take up arms to depart the town, and making it death to have any intercourse with the country afterwards.

At present it looks as if there was no likelihood of peace; the ministry are determined to proceed at all events; the people are already slaves, and have neither virtue nor spirit to help themselves nor us. The time is hastening when George, like Richard,2 may cry "My kingdom for a horse!" and want even that 1 Arrested for correspondence with the enemy, 2 Shakespeare's Richard III.