Page:The Wanderer (1814 Volume 2).pdf/317

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age, infirmity, or disease, had already made her health the slave of prudential forethought.

These precautions, though they answered in divesting her of a casual and transient complaint, were big with many and greater evils, which threatened to become habitual. The faint warmth of a constantly shut up apartment; the total deprivation of that spring which exercise gives to strength, and fresh air to existence, soon operated a change in her whole appearance. Her frame grew weaker; the roses faded from her cheeks; she was shaken by every sound, and menaced with becoming a victim to all the tremors, and all the languors of nervous disorders.

Alas! she cried, how little do we know either of the labours, or the privations, of those whose business it is to administer pleasure to the public! We receive it so lightly, that we imagine it to be lightly given!

Alarmed, now, for her future and