d advise me what course to take, laid
myself as low as they could desire, and entreated them to consider that
I was not in a condition to help myself, and that without some
assistance we must all inevitably perish. I told them that if I had had
but one child, or two children, I would have done my endeavour to have
worked for them with my needle, and should only have come to them to beg
them to help me to some work, that I might get our bread by my labour;
but to think of one single woman, not bred to work, and at a loss where
to get employment, to get the bread of five children, that was not
possible--some of my children being young too, and none of them big
enough to help one another.

It was all one; I received not one farthing of assistance from anybody,
was hardly asked to sit down at the two sisters' houses, nor offered to
eat or drink at two more near relations'. The fifth, an ancient
gentlewoman, aunt-in-law to my husband, a widow, and the least able also
of any of the rest, did, indeed, ask me to sit down, gave me a dinner,
and refreshed me with a kinder treatment than any of the rest, but added
the melancholy part, viz., that she would have helped me, but that,
indeed, she was not able, which, however, I was satisfied was very true.

Here I relieved myself with the constant assistant of the afflicted, I
mean tears; for, relating to her how I was received by the other of my
husband's relations, it made me burst into tears, and I cried vehemently
for a great while together, till I made the good old gentlewoman cry too
several times.

However, I came home from them all without any relief, and went on at
home till I was reduced to such inexpressible distress that is not to be
described. I had been several times after this at the old aunt's, for I
prevailed with her to promise me to go and talk with the other
relations, at least, that, if possible, she could bring some of them to
take off the children, or to contribute something towards their
maintenance. And, to do her justice, she did use her endeavour with
them; but all was to no purpose, they would do nothing, at least that
way. I think, with much entreaty, she obtained, by a kind of collection
among them all, about eleven or twelve shillings in money, which, though
it was a present comfort, was yet not to be named as capable to deliver
me from any part of the load that lay upon me.

There was a poor woman that had been a kind of a dependent upon our
family,