As after a storm has passed, we go out and look abroad to
see the extent of the damage done, so now, having been swept with the besom of
destruction, we look around, as soon as the calm has come, and try to collect
our scattered remnants of property, and see whether we have anything to live
on.
On Tuesday morning our guard left in a great hurry, though
not before I had delivered a letter to one of them to carry to J., which he
pledged himself to take care of. The town began gradually to be cleared, and
though we did not know under what rule we were to be considered, we crept out
to try to hear something. The experience of our neighbors has been in some
instances worse, in some better than ours; but all have suffered. Some
idea of our absorption of thought may be imagined, when I record that since
last Friday till yesterday, we actually forgot to have any dinner
gotten; we forgot to eat; four days we went from morning till dark without food.
SOURCE: Elizabeth Preston Allan, The Life and
Letters of Margaret Junkin Preston, p. 196-7
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