When my eldest brother, on whom my
mother depended, was very weak and almost at death's door, my mother
went to the Breens and begged a little meat, just a few mouthfuls--I
remember well that little piece of meat! My mother gave half of it
to my dying brother; he ate it, fell asleep with a hollow death
gurgle. When it ceased I went to him--he was dead--starved to death
in our presence. Although starving herself, my mother said that if
she had known that Landrum was going to die she would have given him
the balance of the meat. Little Margaret Eddy lingered until
February 4, and her mother until the seventh. Their bodies lay two
days and nights longer in the room with us before we could find
assistance able to bury them in the snow. Some days earlier Milton
Elliot, weak and wandering around, had taken up his abode with us.
We shared with him the remnant of our beef hides. We had had a lot
of that glue-making material. But mark, it would not sustain life.
Elliot soon starved to death, and neighbors removed and interred the
body in the snow beside others.
Catherine Pike, my absent sister's baby, died on the eighteenth of
February, only a few hours before the arrival of the First Relief.
Thus the inmates of our shanty had been reduced to my mother, my
sister Mary, brother Simon, Nioma Pike, Georgie Foster, myself, and
little Jimmy Eddy.
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