ittle did your mother once
think she should be obliged to nurse you in a jail.' The captain's
paternal love was dashed with impatience; he would snatch up the boy in a
transport of grief, press him to his breast, devour him as it were with
kisses, throw up his eyes to heaven in the most emphatic silence, then
convey the child hastily to his mother's arms, pull his hat over his
eyes, stalk out into the common walk, and, finding himself alone, break
out into tears and lamentation.

"Ah! little did this unhappy couple know what further griefs awaited
them! The smallpox broke out in the prison, and poor Tommy Clewline was
infected. As the eruption appeared unfavourable, you may conceive the
consternation with which they were overwhelmed. Their distress was
rendered inconceivable by indigence; for by this time they were so
destitute, that they could neither pay for common attendance, nor procure
proper advice. I did on that occasion what I thought my duty towards my
fellow-creatures. I wrote to a physician of my acquaintance, who was
humane enough to visit the poor little patient; I engaged a careful
woman-prisoner as a nurse, and Mr. Norton supplied them with money and
necessaries. These helps were barely sufficient to preserve them from
the horrors of despair, when they saw their little darling panting under
the rage of a loathsome pestilential malady, during the excessive heat of
the dog-days, and struggling for breath in the noxious atmosphere of a
confined cabin, where they scarce had room to turn on the most necessary
occasions. The eager curiosity with which the mother eyed the doctor's
looks as often as he visited the boy; the terror and trepidation of the
father, while he desired to know his opinion; in a word, the whole tenor
of their distress baffled all description.

"At length the physician, for the sake of his own character, was obliged
to be explicit; and, returning with the captain to the common walk, told
him, in my hearing, that the child could not possibly recover. This
sentence seemed to have petrified the unfortunate parent, who stood
motionless, and seemingly bereft of sense. I led him to my apartment,
where he sat a full hour in that state of stupefaction; then he began to
groan hideously, a shower of tears burst from his eyes, he threw himself
on the floor, and uttered the most piteous lamentation that ever was
heard. Meanwhile, Mrs. Norton being made acquainted with the doctor's
prognosti