What Renders These Incursions Still
More Terrible Is, That They Most Commonly Take Place In The Dead Of
The Night;
We never go to our fields but we are seized with an
involuntary fear, which lessens our strength and weakens
Our labour.
No other subject of conversation intervenes between the different
accounts, which spread through the country, of successive acts of
devastation; and these told in chimney-corners, swell themselves in
our affrighted imaginations into the most terrific ideas! We never
sit down either to dinner or supper, but the least noise immediately
spreads a general alarm and prevents us from enjoying the comfort of
our meals. The very appetite proceeding from labour and peace of
mind is gone; we eat just enough to keep us alive: 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.
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