Page 85 - Fever 1793

All is thick and melancholy gloom.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE October 14th, 1793
Mother Smith sent a mule cart to the cooperage. I scrubbed the cart with boiling vinegar while Eliza gathered the drugs and herbs we would use to treat the children. Joseph prayed over his sons and Nell while we packed bed linens and blankets. When the cart was ready, we dragged the mattress down the narrow staircase and laid it in the cart. I carried Nell.
“Mama,” she called weakly.
I bit my lip and asked my heart to be hard. I couldn’t help her if I fell apart.
Joseph insisted on carrying each boy downstairs by himself, whispering while he tried to massage the
pain from his sons’ heads. He gently lay them on the mattress and tucked them in so they wouldn’t be jostled.
“Take care of them,” he said hoarsely to Eliza.
“Aren’t you coming?” I asked.
Joseph shook his head. “They have a better chance away from me or anyone with the fever,” he said. “He’ll be fine, and those babies will be fine,” said Mother Smith resolutely as she patted Josephs arm.
“The Society will watch out for Joseph, Eliza, don’t you worry about him. Go on now, go with God.” Joseph’s knees buckled slightly as he kissed the boys good-bye, laid his hand on Nell’s head, and hugged Eliza. Mother Smith curled her fingers around his elbow. His tall frame leaned against her
withered one as Eliza slapped the mule’s rump and the wheels of the cart squeaked.
The city was darker than I had ever seen. The moon had already set, but no light flickered in the whale oil lamps that lined High Street. The lamplighters had all fled the city or died. Candlelight spilled from
only a few windows, and the stars were faint and distant, as far away as hope or the dawn.
We struggled to get the mattress out of the cart at the coffeehouse. Our arms strained under the awkward weight, dragging it around to the back gate, through the yard, and finally in the back door. At
last, we set the mattress and the children on the dusty pine boards of the front room.
“We should keep them down here,” I said. “I’ts too close upstairs and frightfully hot in the day.”
“I agree,” Eliza said. “But I don’t like having the mattress on the floor. Let’s push together those tables
and set the mattress on top of them.”
“Should we open the windows while it is dark? That’s how the thieves got in.”
Eliza pulled a knife from the waistband of her skirt. “If they try again, we’ll be ready.”
Once that would have shocked me, but no longer. I picked up the sword and hung it over the fireplace.
We would keep the children safe.
Despite the late hour, sleep would not come. Eliza was deep in prayer by the bedside. I felt like an
intruder. I fumbled in the clothespress for a candle and set it into a holder on the kitchen wall. The flickering light beat back the darkness. The kitchen looked as it had the night Grandfather died. At least we hadn’t suffered any more intruders. My head thumped. So much, so fast. I could not erase visions of the sick and dying. I paced the room. The children slept, Eliza still by their side with her head bent.
I kicked something hard and hurt my toe. What could be on the floor? I got on my hands and knees and felt along the dark floor until I found a lump wrapped in a napkin. I carried it over to the candlelight.
It was Nathaniel’s painting, the flowers he sent to me when Mother was ill. I pressed the picture to my
—Letter of Dr. Benjamin Rush Philadelphia, 1793