51�Թ�

The plunder had been startlingly circumstanced, but its issue had been all I could have hoped.

“Thus were many of the nurses circumstanced,” Jones and Allen would note, “alone, until the patient died, then called away to another scene of distress, and thus have been a week or ten days left to do the best they could without sufficient rest, many of them having some of their dearest connexions sick at the time and suffering for want while their husband, wife, father, mother have been engaged in the service of the white people.”

Circumstanced thus, my thoughts were not of the most acute, but moved with a bewildered sluggishness; and for some moments I stood outside in the dark of the yard, engaged in attempts to collect my wits before returning to my task.

Dreary must be the life of a people so circumstanced. 

The confidence that is required, the excitement of imagination, the unity of effort, and of purpose, the rapid exercise of mind to catch the half-uttered thought, the enforced candour from want of time, which admits of no disguise or circumlocution, the very mystery itself--all cast that magic chain around those so circumstanced, within which they can hardly escape from the power of love.