Page 88 - Fever 1793

I think there is now that kind of weather fermenting which we so much want and has been so often wished for.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX October 23rd, 1793
Something rough lapped at my cheek.
I turned away with a groan.
It followed and rubbed again, like a damp piece of burlap. I pushed it away and came up with a
handful of orange fur.
“Silas, go away. Let me sleep. I haven’t slept for years.”
Silas jumped on me and kneaded with his front paws. The weight on my empty stomach hurt too much.
I sat up, my head spinning. My eyes opened slowly, the lashes sticking together. I blinked.
An early winter quill had etched an icy pattern over the garden. My skirt looked as if it had been
dusted with fine white flour. I shivered. I was cold. Truly cold, not cold with a fever or grippe. I sneezed and bent to look closely at the white veil that lay over the weeds.
Frost.
“I’m dreaming,” I told Silas. The cat ignored me and pounced on a sluggish beetle that lumbered under a leaf. “Starving men dream of food. I dream of frost.” I rubbed my eyes and pushed myself to my feet. My back creaked as I rolled my shoulders. I breathed deeply. The cold air chilled my nose and crackled in my lungs.
The fetid stench that had hung over the city for weeks was gone, replaced with brittle, pure air.
I looked around the garden. No insects hovered over the dying plants or the well. The entire yard sparkled with diamonds of frost that quickly melted into millions of drops of water with a gentle kiss of the sun.
Frost.
This was no dream.
“Eliza!! Eliza!!”
Eliza stumbled out onto the porch, alarmed and confused.
“Look, Eliza,” I cried. “It’s frost! The first frost! The end of the fever!”
She bent down to touch the pale crystals, then rubbed her cold fingertips over her lips.
“Lord have mercy,” she whispered. “We made it.” She turned to me.
“We made it!”
We flung our arms around each other and jumped up and down, laughing for joy.
“Wait,” Eliza said suddenly as she pulled away. “The children. We should bring them out here—let
them breathe in the clean air.”
“Do you think that’s wise? Wont they be chilled?”
“All the work we’ve done to cool them down and you’re worried they might catch a chill? It’s just
what they need.”
The bone-grinding fatigue and numbing hunger of the past weeks evaporated as we carried
Grandfather’s mattress down from the bedchamber and set it in the middle of the yard. Nell, Robert, and William fussed when they were brought outside, but they sat up enough to drink warm water sweetened
—Letter of John Walsh, clerk Philadelphia, 1793