Page:Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1749, vol. 1).pdf/11

 I was now entering on my ﬁfteenth year, when the worst of ills befell me in the loss of my tender fond parents, who were both carried oﬀ by the small-pox, within a few days of each other; my father dying ﬁrst, and thereby hastening the death of my mother, so that l was now left an unhappy friendless Orphan: (for my father's coming to settle there, was accidental, he being originally a Kentish-man.) That cruel distemper which had proved so fatal to them, had indeed seized me, but with such mild and favourable symptoms, that I was presently out of danger, and, what I then did not know the value of, was entirely unmark'd. I skip over here, an account of the natural grief and aﬄiction, which I felt on this melancholy occasion. A little time, and the giddiness of that age, dissipated too soon my reﬂections on that irreparable loss; but nothing contributed more to reconcile me to it, than the notions that were immediately put into my head, of going to London, and Rh