On that same occasion I learned, for the first time, from Miss Abbot's communications to Bessie, that my father had been a poor clergyman; that my mother had married him against the wishes of her friends, who considered the match beneath her; that my grandfather Reed was so irritated at her disobedience, he cut her off without a shilling; that after my mother and father had been married a year, the latter caught the typhus fever while visiting among the poor of a large manufacturing town where his curacy was situated, and where that disease was then prevalent: that my mother took the infection from him, and both died within a month of each other.
Egyévi házasság után apám tífuszban megbetegedett. Abban a nagy gyárvárosban, ahol a parókiája volt, tífuszjárvány ütött ki, és apám a szegény betegeket látogatva kapta meg a bajt, anyám meg apámtól, és egy hónap alatt mind a ketten meghaltak.