herself up, with all the freshness of youthful feeling, to the spells of the drama, and raved about Hamlet and Ophelia like any other school-girl.
But her next letter recurs to her malady, and for the first time she expresses a fear that her disease is beyond the reach of common remedies. Her mother was alarmed, and would have gone immediately to her, but she was herself confined to her room by illness. Her father's cooler judgment inferred, from their receiving no letters from Lucretia's friends, that there was nothing immediately alarming in her symptoms.
The next letter removed every doubt. It was scarcely legible; still she assures her mother she is better, and begs she will not risk the consequences of a long journey. But neither health nor life weighed now with the mother against seeing her child. She set off, and, by appointment, joined Mr. K. at Whitehall. They proceeded thence to Albany, where, after the first emotions of meeting were over, Lucretia said, "O mamma, I thought I should never have seen you again! But, now I have you here, and can lay my aching head upon your bosom, I shall soon be better."
For a few days the balm seemed effectual; she was better, and the physicians believed she would recover; but her mother was no longer to be persuaded from her conviction of the fatal nature of the disease, and arrangements were immediately made to convey her to Plattsburg: The journey was effected, notwithstanding it was during the heats of July, with less physical suffering than was apprehended. She shrank painfully from the gaze her beauty inevitably attracted, heightened as it
