The New Hampshire Gazette

FRAGMENT.

--His spirit is now an inhabitant of rest " The mournful cadence with which these words were utter'd, caught my attention--they were the accents of distress; and looking round, I saw at a small distance the mourning Matilda, with her orphan children. She was sitting under a pine --her eyes turn'd to Heaven, as imploring that resignation which her woe-fraught countenance plainly told she had been unable to acquire by human exertion--It was a sight which attun'd every chord to sympathy, and call'd the best affections of my heart into action. " Don't cry so, mamma," said the eldest little girl, " God will take care of us."--I approach'd respectfully :-- "Has any new affliction befallen you, Ma-tilda? Can I be of service?"--She look'd at me a moment--" No--you cannot restore what has been taken from me by worse than savage violence--my murder'd husband -my hapless brother.---Yes"--(continued she)-- " the Almighty will avenge them, and the wrongs of the injur'd shall not go unredressed. My husband, you know, Sir, fell a victim to French barbarity. and the most complicated injustice--Still I had a brother, whose disposition led him to befriend and succour the distress'd--He was the darling of his aged parents, and the joy of his fond sisters!--alas! he ventur'd upon a West India voyage--he was taken--and plunder'd even to the clothes which he wore --by those lawless pirates who disgrace the image of their Maker--The consequence, was his premature and melancholy death. --Go, (added she) and tell those who boast of republican principles, to contemplate the sanguinary effects of their political system--Bid them feast their imaginations upon the miseries of widow'd mothers and fatherless infants ;--but remember, retribution will overtake the authors of such calamities--and tho' they enjoy the short. liv'd triumphs of this world, let them shudder at the awful prospect of eternity!"