our sleep is disturbed by the most frightful dreams; sometimes I start awake, as if the great hour of danger was come; at other times the howling of our dogs seems to announce the arrival of the enemy:  we leap out of bed and run to arms; my poor wife with panting bosom and silent tears, takes leave of me, as if we were to see each other no more; she snatches the youngest children from their beds, who, suddenly awakened, increase by their innocent questions the horror of the dreadful moment.  She tries to hide them in the cellar, as if our cellar was inaccessible to the fire.  I place all my servants at the windows, and myself at the door, where I am determined to perish.  Fear industriously increases every sound; we all listen; each communicates to the other his ideas and conjectures.  We remain thus sometimes for whole hours, our hearts and our minds racked by the most anxious suspense:  what a dreadful situation, a thousand times worse than that of a soldier engaged in the midst of the most severe conflict!  Sometimes feeling the spontaneous courage of a man, I seem to wish for the decisive minute; the next instant a message from my wife, sent by one of the children, puzzling me beside with their little questions, unmans me:  away goes my courage, and I descend again into the deepest despondency.  At last finding that it was a false alarm, we return once more to our beds; but what good can the kind sleep of nature do to us when interrupted by such scenes!  Securely placed as you are, you can have no idea of our agitations, but by hear-say; no relation can be equal to what we suffer and to what we feel.  Every morning my youngest children are sure to have frightful dreams to relate:  in vain I exert my authority to keep them silent, it is not in my power; and these images of their disturbed imagination, instead of being frivolously looked upon as in the days of our happiness, are on the contrary considered as warnings and sure prognostics of our future fate.  I am not a superstitious man, but since our misfortunes, I am grown more timid, and less disposed to treat the doctrine of omens with contempt.

Though these evils have been gradual, yet they do not become habitual like other incidental evils.  The nearer I view the end of this catastrophe, the more I shudder.  But why should I trouble you with such unconnected accounts; men secure and out of danger are soon fatigued with mournful details:  can you enter with me into fellowship with all these afflictive sensations; have you a tear ready to shed over the approaching ruin of a once opulent and substantial family?  Read this I pray with the eyes of sympathy; with a tender sorrow, pity the lot of those whom you once called your friends; who were once surrounded with plenty, ease, and perfect security; but who now expect every night to be their last, and who are as wretched as criminals under an impending sentence of the law.