My Dear M----: You will, I trust, long ere receiving this, have read
my letter from Florence, enclosing one to my mother, informing her
under what circumstances I had drawn on you through ----, and
mentioning how I wished the bill to be met in case of any accident to
me on my homeward course. That course, as respects weather, has been
thus far not unpleasant; but the disaster that has befallen us is such
as I never dreamed of. I had taken passage with Captain Hasty--one who
seemed to me one of the best and most high-minded of our American men.
He showed the kindest interest in us. His wife, an excellent woman,
was with him. I thought, during the voyage, if safe and my child well,
to have as much respite from care and pain as sea-sickness would
permit. But scarcely was that enemy in some measure quelled, when the
captain fell sick. At first his disease presented the appearance of
nervous fever. I was with him a great deal; indeed, whenever I could
relieve his wife from a ministry softened by great love and the
courage of womanly heroism: The last days were truly terrible with
disgusts and fatigues; for he died, we suppose,--no physician has been
allowed to come on board to see the body,--of confluent small-pox.
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