Page:True humanity usefully exerted.pdf/14

(14) it ſhould come to be paid, which were ſuch, that when I attempted to mortgage it, the wretch’s laſt resource, to put off ſtarving as long as he can, what I could get from those vultures, who faten upon the sufferings of a ſoldier, was scarce sufficient to satisfy our present wants. How then could I look forward for a family, dearer to me then life? What could support resolution, when hope was gone? Mine was unequal to the trial; and I was beginning to meditate on putting an end to a life of such misery, without conſidering that the sufferings of those, for whom I felt so much more than for myself, muſf be ſtill made heavier by such a base desertion of them, when heaven in its mercy viſited my family with a violent fever, which freed me from farther fears for the future welfare of my three eldeſt sons, and with difficultly spared two, whom you see before you. O! my poor boys! happy! thrice happier than us whom you left behind! Excuse this weakness. Sir, nature will force the involuntary tear in spite of reason; for were they not the children of my love?

During their illness, I loſt every other care in my attendance upon them; nor omitted any poſſible means to preserve lives, for which my fears foreboded nothing but unhappiness; but though their deaths freed me from a part of those fears, they