Page:Memoir and poems of Phillis Wheatley, a native African and a slave.djvu/33

Rh At the end of that period, Peters came for his wife, and, having provided an apartment, took her thither with her little family.

It must be remembered that this was a season of general poverty Phillis's friends of former days were scattered far and wide. Many of them, attached to the royal interest, had left the country. The successful patriots, during the seven-years' contention, had not only lost the profits which would have arisen from their industry, but were obliged to strain every nerve to meet the exigences of the war. The depreciation of the currency added greatly to the general distress. Mr. Thacher, for example, in his History of Plymouth, tells us of a man who sold a cow for forty dollars, and gave the same sum for a goose! We have ourselves heard an elderly lady relate, that her husband, serving in the army, forwarded her in a letter fifty dollars, which was of so little value when she received it, that she paid the whole for a quarter of mutton, so poor and so tough, that it required, great skill and patience, in the culinary department, to render it fit for the table. 'In this condition of things,' observes the lady, whom we have more than once referred to, and to whom we expressed our surprise at the neglect and poverty into