ole nights of mirth
and jollity. With such inclinations in my heart I went to my closet
yesterday in the evening, and resolved to be sorrowful; upon which
occasion, I could not but look with disdain upon myself, that though all
the reasons which I had to lament the loss of many of my friends are now
as forcible as at the moment of their departure, yet did not my heart
swell with the same sorrow which I felt at that time; but I could,
without tears, reflect upon many pleasing adventures I have had with
some who have long been blended with common earth. Though it is by the
benefit of nature that length of time thus blots out the violence of
afflictions; yet with tempers too much given to pleasure, it is almost
necessary to revive the old places of grief in our memory, and ponder
step by step on past life, to lead the mind into that sobriety of
thought which poises the heart, and makes it beat with due time, without
being quickened with desire, or retarded with despair, from its proper
and equal motion. When we wind up a clock that is out of order, to make
it go well for the future, we do not immediately set the hand to the
present instant, but we make it strike the round of all its hours,
before it can recover the regularity of its time. "Such," thought I,
"shall be my method this evening; and since it is that day of the year
which I dedicate to the memory of such in another life as I much
delighted in when living, an hour or two shall be sacred to sorrow and
their memory, while I run over all the melancholy circumstances of this
kind which have occurred to me in my whole life."

The first sense of sorrow I ever knew was upon the death of my
father,[299] at which time I was not quite five years of age; but was
rather amazed at what all the house meant, than possessed with a real
understanding why nobody was willing to play with me. I remember I went
into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it.
I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a beating the coffin, and
calling "Papa"; for I know not how I had some slight idea that he was
locked up there. My mother catched me in her arms, and transported
beyond all patience of the silent grief she was before in, she almost
smothered me in her embrace, and told me in a flood of tears, papa could
not hear me, and would play with me no more, for they were going to put
him under ground, whence he could never come to us again. She was a very
beautiful woman, o