eriously alarmed by her illness which trifling as it may appear to
you, a certain instinctive sensibility whispered me, would in the End be
fatal to her.

Alas! my fears were but too fully justified; she grew gradually
worse--and I daily became more alarmed for her. At length she was
obliged to confine herself solely to the Bed allotted us by our worthy
Landlady--. Her disorder turned to a galloping Consumption and in a few
days carried her off. Amidst all my Lamentations for her (and violent
you may suppose they were) I yet received some consolation in the
reflection of my having paid every attention to her, that could be
offered, in her illness. I had wept over her every Day--had bathed her
sweet face with my tears and had pressed her fair Hands continually in
mine--. "My beloved Laura (said she to me a few Hours before she died)
take warning from my unhappy End and avoid the imprudent conduct which
had occasioned it... Beware of fainting-fits... Though at the time they
may be refreshing and agreable yet beleive me they will in the end, if
too often repeated and at improper seasons, prove destructive to your
Constitution... My fate will teach you this.. I die a Martyr to my greif
for the loss of Augustus.. One fatal swoon has cost me my Life.. Beware
of swoons Dear Laura.... A frenzy fit is not one quarter so pernicious;
it is an exercise to the Body and if not too violent, is I dare say
conducive to Health in its consequences--Run mad as often as you chuse;
but do not faint--"

These were the last words she ever addressed to me.. It was her dieing
Advice to her afflicted Laura, who has ever most faithfully adhered to
it.

After having attended my lamented freind to her Early Grave, I
immediately (tho' late at night) left the detested Village in which
she died, and near which had expired my Husband and Augustus. I had not
walked many yards from it before I was overtaken by a stage-coach,
in which I instantly took a place, determined to proceed in it to
Edinburgh, where I hoped to find some kind some pitying Freind who would
receive and comfort me in my afflictions.

It was so dark when I entered the Coach that I could not distinguish
the Number of my Fellow-travellers; I could only perceive that they were
many. Regardless however of anything concerning them, I gave myself up
to my own sad Reflections. A general silence prevailed--A silence, which
was by nothing interrupted but by the loud and repeated snores of on