Page:Records of the Life of the Rev. John Murray.djvu/210

200 half pay, or commutation, and, during the years of languor, and decrepitude, he might have commanded his own carriage, and servants; but the reader must have seen, that the preacher was accustomed to withdraw from the approaches of affluence.

Mr. Murray continued in the army so long as his health would permit, but being violently seized by an indisposition, which terminated in a bilious fever that precipitated him to the gates of the grave, he was, by the Physician of the Brigade, conducted to Gloucester; and no sooner was his health re-established, than his strongest feelings were powerfully excited, by the sufferings of the sons and daughters of want in that town. War of any description, is particularly oppressive to its inhabitants, seated upon the margin of the ocean, their subsistence is principally derived from the deep. The rich sources of Commerce, thrown open by the genial hand of peace, become, to the hardy, and enterprizing Gloucesterian, legitimate objects of pursuit; and his uniform, and industrious efforts, are crowned by competency. But whatever obstructs his adventurous plans, inevitably involves him in distress, and the period to which we advert was, perhaps, the most gloomy of any during the revolutionary war. It had continued long enough to try without familiarizing or indurating the feelings, and hope had almost become the victim of despair. The humane preacher surveyed those multiplied children of penury—and he surveyed them with a philanthropic eye; nor was this all—commencing a journey in the depth of a severe Winter, he addressed the general officers in the American army, beginning with their revered Chief, and extending his application to many other gentlemen, whose confidence, and whose friendship he enjoyed. He addressed to those distinguished individuals, the voice of supplication, and so successful was his embassy, that he returned to Gloucester with a large sum of money, which he converted into rice, meal, and molasses, rendering a scrupulous account to the selectmen, and praying them to recommend such persons, as were proper objects of this providential bounty; the whole was punctually distributed, and many sufferers most essentially relieved. Yet on the 27th day of February, in the succeeding year, 1777, we find this same feeling solicitor, summoned from the house of a friend, Mr. Winthrop Sargent, where he was suffering from indisposition, and arraigned at the bar, of the then committee of safety, for the town of Gloucester. Some gentlemen councelled him to disregard the summons, especially as the whole committee were not assembled, and those who were collected, were decidedly his inveterate enemies,—but he answered, that possessing a consciousness of