was shortly to suffer an even greater loss, for on January 21,
1805, her father died, after an illness of only forty-eight hours.
Jane's letter, or rather two letters--for, the first being wrongly
directed, she had to write a second--to her brother Frank on this
occasion have fortunately been kept.

Green Park Buildings:
Tuesday evening, January 22, 1805.[140]

MY DEAREST FRANK,--I wrote to you yesterday, but
your letter to Cassandra this morning, by which we
learn the probability of your being by this time
at Portsmouth, obliges me to write to you again,
having unfortunately a communication as necessary
as painful to make to you. Your affectionate heart
will be greatly wounded, and I wish the shock
could have been lessened by a better preparation;
but the event has been sudden and so must be the
information of it. We have lost an excellent
father. An illness of only eight and forty hours
carried him off yesterday morning between ten and
eleven. He was seized on Saturday with a return of
the feverish complaint which he had been subject
to for the last three years. . . . A physician was
called in yesterday morning, but he was at that
time past all possibility of cure; and Dr. Gibbs
and Mr. Bowen had scarcely left his room before he
sunk into a sleep from which he never woke.

It has been very sudden. Within twenty-four hours
of his death he was walking about with only the
help of a stick--was even reading.

We had, however, some hours of preparation, and
when we understood his recovery to be hopeless,
most fervently did we pray for the speedy release
which ensued. To have seen him languishing long,
struggling for hours, would have been dreadful,
and, thank God, we were all spared from it.

* * * * *

Except the restlessness and confusion of high
fever, he did not suffer, and he was mercifully
spared from knowing that he was about to quit
objects so beloved, and so fondly cherished as his
wife and children ever were. His tenderness as a
father, who can do justice to?

* * *