Arm yourself my amiable young Freind with all the philosophy you
are Mistress of; summon up all the fortitude you possess, for
alas! in the perusal of the following Pages your sensibility
will be most severely tried. Ah! what were the misfortunes I
had before experienced and which I have already related to you,
to the one I am now going to inform you of. The Death of my
Father and my Mother and my Husband though almost more than my
gentle Nature could support, were trifles in comparison to the
misfortune I am now proceeding to relate. The morning after our
arrival at the Cottage, Sophia complained of a violent pain in
her delicate limbs, accompanied with a disagreable Head-ake She
attributed it to a cold caught by her continued faintings in the
open air as the Dew was falling the Evening before. This I
feared was but too probably the case; since how could it be
otherwise accounted for that I should have escaped the same
indisposition, but by supposing that the bodily Exertions I had
undergone in my repeated fits of frenzy had so effectually
circulated and warmed my Blood as to make me proof against the
chilling Damps of Night, whereas, Sophia lying totally inactive
on the ground must have been exposed to all their severity. I
was most seriously alarmed by her illness which trifling as it
may appear to you, a certain instinctive sensibility whispered
me, would in the End be fatal to her.
Alas! my fears were but too fully justified; she grew gradually
worse–and I daily became more alarmed for her. At length she
was obliged to confine herself solely to the Bed allotted us by
our worthy Landlady–. Her disorder turned to a galloping
Consumption and in a few days carried her off. Amidst all my
Lamentations for her (and violent you may suppose they were) I
yet received some consolation in the reflection of my having paid
every attention to her, that could be offered, in her illness. I
had wept over her every Day–had bathed her sweet face with my
tears and had pressed her fair Hands continually in mine–. “My
beloved Laura (said she to me a few Hours before she died) take
warning from my unhappy End and avoid the imprudent conduct which
had occasioned it. . . Beware of fainting-fits. . . Though at the
time they may be refreshing and agreable yet beleive me they will
in the end, if too often repeated and at improper seasons, prove
destructive to your Constitution. . . My fate will teach you
this. . I die a Martyr to my greif for the loss of Augustus. .
One fatal swoon has cost me my Life. . Beware of swoons Dear
Laura. . . . A frenzy fit is not one quarter so pernicious; it is
an exercise to the Body and if not too violent, is I dare say
conducive to Health in its consequences–Run mad as often as you
chuse; but do not faint–”
These were the last words she ever addressed to me. . It was her
dieing Advice to her afflicted Laura, who has ever most
faithfully adhered to it.
After having attended my lamented freind to her Early Grave, I
immediately (tho’ late at night) left the detested Village in
which she died, and near which had expired my Husband and
Augustus. I had not walked many yards from it before I was
overtaken by a stage-coach, in which I instantly took a place,
determined to proceed in it to Edinburgh, where I hoped to find
some kind some pitying Freind who would receive and comfort me in
my afflictions.
It was so dark when I entered the Coach that I could not
distinguish the Number of my Fellow-travellers; I could only
perceive that they were many. Regardless however of anything
concerning them, I gave myself up to my own sad Reflections. A
general silence prevailed–A silence, which was by nothing
interrupted but by the loud and repeated snores of one of the
Party.
“What an illiterate villain must that man be! (thought I to
myself) What a total want of delicate refinement must he have,