they died, across the church pews, waiting for a tardy coffin and a shallow grave. At last the coffins do not come fast enough, and many are buried in goods boxes without a prayer save the silent one breathed by the two men who give all their time to these last offices.*
Thomas was in his eighty-first year, and the strain and anxiety and the labor he performed came near killing him. One day he drove forty miles in passing back and forth between his house and Dry Grove, carrying food and fresh nurses to relieve exhausted ones. He said afterwards many, many times that he could never forgive himself for placing his children in such a position of danger. His daughters had obtained his consent before going into the fever-stricken village to nurse their friends. He seemed to think he had failed in his duty, and never ceased to express the deepest self-condemnation at having yielded his judgment to their wishes.
The neighborhood was desolated by the fever. During preceding years family connections and friends had died or moved away, and the circle of congenial friends, always small, had grown smaller as time went on. Under these circumstances, and as there appeared to be no hope of improvement in their surroundings, the Burleigh family resolved on leaving the old home forever, as soon as the last of the debts were paid. A sum of money sent by Frederick Dabney as a gift to his uncle he sent at once to his creditors. Still, three years were to elapse before the final payments were made. Our dearest father had been so shaken by the scenes that he and his children had passed through during the fever, that we thought it best to persuade him to take a change every winter by going to visit one or other of his married children. The summers were made pleasant at Burleigh by the society of his affectionate nieces and nephews and their families, but the winters were lonely and depressing. We were the more earnest in this, as during the years 1879 and '80 he
.* As in time of war the favorite sport of children is playing soldier, so in the last days of the pestilence the forlorn little orphans made mimic graves, decking them with wild flowers and grasses and marking head and foot with broken bits of china.
