FORD, TO ROBERT LOVELACE, ESQ.
SAT. TEN O'CLOCK.

Poor Mrs. Norton is come. She was set down at the door; and would have
gone up stairs directly. But Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Lovick being together
and in tears, and the former hinting too suddenly to the truly-venerable
woman the fatal news, she sunk down at her feet in fits; so that they
were forced to breath a vein to bring her to herself, and to a capacity
of exclamation; and then she ran on to Mrs. Lovick and me, who entered
just as she recovered, in praise of the lady, in lamentations for her,
and invectives against you; but yet so circumscribed were her invectives,
that I could observe in them the woman well educated, and in her
lamentations the passion christianized, as I may say.

She was impatient to see the corpse. The women went up with her. But
they owned that they were too much affected themselves on this occasion
to describe her extremely-affecting behaviour.

With trembling impatience she pushed aside the coffin-lid. She bathed
the face with her tears, and kissed her cheeks and forehead, as if she
were living. It was she indeed! she said; her sweet young lady! her very
self! Nor had death, which changed all things, a power to alter her
lovely features! She admired the serenity of her aspect. She no doubt
was happy, she said, as she had written to her she should be; but how
many miserable creatures had she left behind her!--The good woman
lamenting that she herself had lived to be one of them.

It was with difficulty they prevailed upon her to quit the corpse; and
when they went into the next apartment, I joined them, and acquainted her
with the kind legacy her beloved young lady had left her; but this rather
augmented than diminished her concern. She ought, she said, to have
attended her in person. What was the world to her, wringing her hands,
now the child of her bosom, and of her heart, was no more? Her principal
consolation, however, was, that she should not long survive her. She
hoped, she said, that she did not sin, in wishing she might not.

It was easy to observe, by the similitude of sentiments shown in this and
other particulars, that the divine lady owed to this excellent woman many
of her good notions.

I thought it would divert the poor gentlewoman, and not altogether
unsuitably, if I were to put her upon furnishing mourning for herself; as
it would rouse her, by a seasonable and necessary employment, from that
dismal lethargy