that this wretch made to my eye, by her suffragans and daughters, who
surveyed her with scouling frighted attention, which one might easily
see had more in it of horror and self-concern (and self-condemnation too)
than of love or pity; as who should say, See! what we ourselves must one
day be!

As soon as she saw me, her naturally-big voice, more hoarsened by her
ravings, broke upon me: O Mr. Belford! O Sir! see what I am come to!--
See what I am brought to!--To have such a cursed crew about me, and not
one of them to take care of me! But to let me tumble down stairs so
distant from the room I went from! so distant from the room I meant to go
to!--Cursed, cursed be every careless devil!--May this or worse be their
fate every one of them!

And then she cursed and swore most vehemently, and the more, as two or
three of them were excusing themselves on the score of their being at
that time as unable to help themselves as she. As soon as she had
cleared the passage of her throat by the oaths and curses which her wild
impatience made her utter, she began in a more hollow and whining strain
to bemoan herself. And here, said she--Heaven grant me patience!
[clenching and unclenching her hands] am I to die thus miserably!--of a
broken leg in my old age!--snatched away by means of my own intemperance!
Self-do! Self-undone!--No time for my affairs! No time to repent!--And
in a few hours (Oh!--Oh!--with another long howling O--h!--U--gh--o! a
kind of screaming key terminating it) who knows, who can tell where I
shall be?--Oh! that indeed I never, never, had had a being!

What could one say to such a wretch as this, whose whole life had been
spent in the most diffusive wickedness, and who no doubt has numbers of
souls to answer for? Yet I told her, she must be patient: that her