Explore "Ormond Volume 1" by Charles Brockden Brown on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
This period of tranquillity was short. Poverty hovered at their threshold, and in a state precarious as theirs could not be long excluded. The lady was more accustomed to anticipate good than evil, but she was not unconscious that the winter, which was hastening, would bring with it numerous inconveniences. Wants during that season are multiplied, while the means of supplying them either fail or are diminished. Fuel is alone a cause of expense equal to all other articles of subsistence. Her dwelling was old, crazy, and full of avenues to air. It was evident that neither fire nor clothing would, in an habitation like that, attemper the chilling blasts. Her scanty gains were equal to their needs during summer, but would probably fall short during the prevalence of cold.
These reflections could not fail sometimes to intrude. She indulged them as long as they served, merely to suggest expedients and provisions for the future, but laboured to call away her attention when they merely produced anxiety. This she more easily effected, as some months of summer were still to come, and her knowledge of the vicissitudes to which human life is subject taught her to rely upon the occurrence of some fortunate though unforeseen event.