I have received; but I hope to be always ready at your
call. Our sorrow has different effects; you are withdrawn into solitude,
and I am driven into company. I am afraid of thinking what I have lost.
I never had such a friend before. Let me have your prayers and those of
my dear Queeney.

The prudence and resolution of your design to return so soon to your
business and your duty, deserves great praise; I shall communicate it,
on Wednesday, to the other executors. Be pleased to let me know, whether
you would have me come to Streatham to receive you, or stay here till
the next day. I am, &c.

XLIX.--To THE SAME.

Bolt court, Fleet street, June 19, 1783.

DEAR MADAM,--I am sitting down, in no cheerful solitude, to write a
narrative, which would once have affected you with tenderness and
sorrow, but which you will, perhaps, pass over now with a careless
glance of frigid indifference. For this diminution of regard, however, I
know not whether I ought to blame you, who may have reasons which I
cannot know; and I do not blame myself, who have, for a great part of
human life, done you what good I could, and have never done you evil.

I have been disordered in the usual way, and had been relieved, by the
usual methods, by opium and catharticks, but had rather lessened my dose
of opium.

On Monday, the 16th, I sat for my picture, and walked a considerable
way, with little inconvenience. In the afternoon and evening, I felt
myself light and easy, and began to plan schemes of life. Thus I went to
bed, and, in a short time, waked and sat up, as has been long my custom,
when I felt a confusion and indistinctness in my head, which lasted, I
suppose, about half a minute; I was alarmed, and prayed God, that,
however he might afflict my body, he would spare my understanding. This
prayer, that I might try the integrity of my faculties, I made in Latin
verse. The lines were not very good, but I knew them not to be very
good: I made them easily, and concluded myself to be unimpaired in my
faculties.

Soon after, I perceived that I had suffered a paralytick stroke, and
that my speech was taken from me. I had no pain, and so little
dejection, in this dreadful state, that I wondered at my own apathy, and
considered that, perhaps, death itself, when it should come, would
excite less horrour than seems now to attend it.

In order to rouse the vocal organs, I took two drams. Wine has been
celebrated for the production of eloquence. I