and sister, I must write; but, dear Annie, I am now doomed to dim your eye and cloud your brow, for I know that what I have to communicate will surprise and distress you. Our dear cousin John is dead! O! I need not tell you how much, how deeply he is.lamented; you knew him, and like every one else who did, you loved him. Poor Eliza! how my heart aches for her! her father, her mother, her brother, all gone; almost the last, the dearest tie is broken which bound her to life; what a vacancy must there be in her heart! How fatal would it prove to almost every hope in life, were we allowed even a momentary glimpse of futurity! for often half the enjoyments of life consist in the anticipation of pleasures, which may never be ours." Soon after this Lucretia witnessed the death of a beloved young friend; it was the first death she bad seen, and it had its natural effect on a reflecting and sensitive mind. Her thoughts wandered through eternity by the light of religion, the only light that penetrates beyond the death-bed. She wrote many religious pieces,—and among them one commencing with
During this winter her application to her books was so unremitting that her parents again became alarmed for her health, and persuaded her occasionally to join in the amusements of Plattsburg. She came home one night at twelve o'clock, from a ball; and, after giving a most lively account of all she had seen and heard to her mother, she quietly seated herself at the table, and wrote her "Reflections after leaving a Ball-room." Her spirit,
