MY dear Coleridge—I don’t know why I write, except from the
propensity misery has to tell her griefs. Hetty died on
Friday night, about eleven o’clock, after eight days’ illness;
Mary, in consequence of fatigue and
anxiety, is fallen ill again, and I was obliged to remove her yesterday. I am
left alone in a house with nothing but Hetty’s dead
body to keep me company. To-morrow I bury her, and then I shall be quite alone,
with nothing but a cat to remind me that the house has been full of living
beings like myself. My heart is quite sunk, and I don’t know where to
look for relief. Mary will get better again; but her
constantly being liable to such relapses is dreadful; nor is it the least of
our evils that her case and all our story is so well known around us. We are in
a manner marked. Excuse my troubling you; but I have nobody by me to speak to
me. I slept out last night, not being able to endure the change and the
stillness. But I did not sleep well, and I must come back to my own bed. I am
going to try and get a friend to come and be with me to-morrow. I
| 1800 | CHAPEL STREET ABANDONED | 167 |
