upon the body: but, surely, they were tears of joy; for I have heard many persons, who were then present, since say, that they would gladly have taken the place of Susan Gray, and have laid themselves down with her in the dust, could they thus have been admitted to that place where, we trust, her soul now is. Susan Gray was buried by the side of her dear parents; and my Lady West was so good as to cause a monument of white stone to be placed over her grave. These words are engraven on the stone: "To the memory of SUSAN GRAY, who departed this life in the nineteenth year of her age, on the 29th day of July, in the year of our Lord, 1741. 66 Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ. Titus ii. 13." Twenty years have now passed since the death of Susan Gray, yet still she is spoken of with pleasure and honest pride in our little village. Every stranger who visits us is taken to see her grave, and her story is told by every mother before she sends her daughter from her native cottage, to earn her bread in the wide wicked world. Mrs. Bennet has been dead nearly ten years: she died in the workhouse in Ludlow, where she spent the last five years of her life in a most miserable way. For after the story of Susan Gray was known, all her friends forsook her, and her customers fell off one by one; till, at length, the old woman, having spent the few guineas which the captain had given her for her wicked services, was obliged to give up her cottage, to sell her furniture, and to go into the poorhouse, where, from confinement and hard living, she soon fell into a bad state of health, and, having lingered in sad pain for a few years, died, without one friend to weep over her. Thus she received the recompense of her wicked deeds even in this world, and terrible, it is to be feared, will be her lot in the world to come. "Behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch." Mal. iv. 1. It was not till after Susan Gray had been dead seven years, that I heard of the sad end of Charlotte Owen. She went, as has been before said, after the captain, when he left Ludlow. It was true, indeed, that he did not wish for her company: however, he took her with him to London, and she lived with him about a month; at the end of which time the captain's wife came from Ireland: for this wicked man, in spite of all the vows and promises he had made to Susan Gray, had been married about twelve months to a very rich lady in Ireland. The captain then left Charlotte Owen, and went abroad to the West Indies, where I heard, some time afterward, that he died, I fear, without repentance. What became of Charlotte Owen after that time, for some years, I could not hear; but I afterward found that she had led a very wicked life; for, at the end of seven years, a friend of mine, who is a clergyman in London, coming to see me in the country, told me, that, a few months past, he had visited a poor wretch who was dying in a garret, in a narrow alley in London; that she said her name was Charlotte Owen, that Ludlow was her native place, and that she had brought herself to this sad state by her extravagance and wicked ness. My friend talked to her of repentance, and of her Saviour and her God; but she would not hearken to him. She said she could not bear to hear the name of her God, or of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom she had despised; she said she could not endure the thoughts of death, and made use of the most profane and shocking words when the doctor told her that he could not save her. In this dreadful state she lay for some days; and although the pain of her body was very great, yet it was nothing to the grief and anguish of her mind. As soon as she was dead, her body was thrown into a coffin by the mistress of the house in which she lodged, and she was buried immediately; for she had no friend to watch by her, or to close her eyes, or to see that the last offices were performed decently fo. her. And now I must finish my story, by beseeching you, my good young women, to take warning by the sad end of this wicked girl, and to shun the ways of sin, which lead to eternal misery. Remember Susan Gray, and let her example be ever in your mind; and let it not be your wish to be rich and great, to seek for distinction and pleasure in this world, but to do your duty in that humble state in which God has placed you. And, however lowly and poor that state may be, yet fear not that you will fail of your reward: God is no respecter of persons, but he will reward every man according to his deeds. "God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment. The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished." 2 Pet. ii. 4, 9. |