Hitherto I may say that my lines had fallen in pleasant places—especially when, in the course of a few months after my marriage, my brother returned from Philadelphia, and became a clerk to one of the most respectable merchants in the city. This was a pleasant reunion, and all things went prosperous—my thrift was thriving, and the time when Rebecca expected to be a mother was drawing nigh. But a sentence against the city had gone forth, and the angel of the pestilence was on the threshold of heaven, shaking his black wings for a flight to the earth. About the middle of July he alighted in New York, and with a phial in each hand, filled with the wrath of the yellow fever, he began to pour out the desolation.

On the 12th of August, a wail and lamentation spread throughout the town—Rachel weeping for her children; then there was a hurrying to and fro—the inhabitants flying from destruction, followed by carts loaded with furniture, feather-beds, and tables,—a universal flitting. The city was forsaken, and Silence, with weeping eyes, sat in the market-place.

We, having no friends in the country to fly to, and not having money to support us there in idleness, concluded that it was ordained for a purpose, that we should remain in the midst of the calamity—and in this frame of mind, I invited my brother and my wife's mother to join us in an offering to the Lord. We assembled in the evening; it was the Sabbath, and on that day there had been no worship, for the stern angel with his phials stood at the church-door, and the worshippers dreaded to enter.

The air was fearfully warm, and our windows were open. The setting sun shone in upon us, and we all thought, as we prepared for the prayer, that there was a yellow drowsiness in his eye, as if the glory of the world was smitten with mortal disease—we contemplated the prodigy in silence, and when he disappeared, we all fell by one thought upon our knees. It was my intent to have spoken, but utterance was denied to me: we folded our hands, and offered ourselves to the mercy of Providence with the voices of our hearts.