ly to pass away. I no longer saw my
father, nor the ladies and gentlemen; we were no longer living in a
large house; our servants were gone, and mother was almost always in
tears. Then, all of a sudden, we were riding alone in a post-chaise;
night came on, and we stopped at a house. There mother was very ill, and
laid in bed, and did not speak to me for several days, and a great many
people came and talked to her, but she did not answer any of them. At
last I thought she was asleep, for her eyes were shut, and her hands
were quite cold; then I wanted to get upon the bed that I might sit
beside her, but the strange people that were there carried me out of the
room, and teazed me with questions that I did not understand, or, if I
had understood them, could not have answered for crying. After this two
men came and put my mother into a large black box, and took her away.

These are painful remembrances, so sad and so painful that, at this
distance of time, I cannot think of them without weeping.

What passed immediately after this I cannot remember, for I have been
told that I had a violent fever, and was ill for a long time. Of all
these things I have but a confused remembrance, yet I do remember them;
but the time from which I can clearly recollect is from when I was about
six years old, and from that period I remember every material
circumstance of my life as clearly as if I had written them all down as
they happened. I will now continue my narrative at the time from which I
can correctly remember. I then found myself living in a large cottage
with nearly twenty other children. We were under the care of an elderly
woman, whom we called nurse. This house, I was told, when I was old
enough to understand the meaning of the expression, was the place where
the infant paupers, or poor children of the parish, were kept. Of our
treatment there I have no cause to complain. We were well washed every
morning, and our clothes were kept clean and tidy; our food was coarse
and rather scanty, so that we always had a good appetite, yet we had
sufficient to keep us in a good state of health, and the farmers' wives
and cottage people who lived near would often give us pieces of bread
and a little milk, so that, as I said before, we had no cause for
complaint. Our nurse taught us reading and sewing, and, as she was
rather a good-natured woman, she would frequently converse with us, if
the prattle of children can be called conversation, and