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University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 (1)
University of Virginia Library, Modern English collection[X]
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expand1997 (1)
1Author:  Sedgwick Catharine Maria 1789-1867Add
 Title:  The Linwoods; Or, "sixty Years Since" in America  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Modern English collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: It is reasonable to suppose that the disclosures which occurred in Sir Henry Clinton's library would be immediately followed by their natural sequences: that love declared by one party, and betrayed by the other, would, according to the common usages of society, soon issue in mutual affiancing. But these were not the piping times of peace, and the harmony of events was sadly broken by the discords of the period. —I could have huged you before we parted, I have been so pleased with you from the beginin to the end of this biznes. I felt for you in the loss of your hors, and I can't bear the thots of your riden that sorry jade, that's only been used to prouling about o' nights, on all sorts of diviltry; so I've ordered Gurden to put into your hands a likely oretur, that our fokes at home has sent up to be sold to the ofisers in camp. Take it, my boy, and don't feel beholden to me; for when the war is at end, and it's conveneyent, we'll settle for it. —I perceive by your letters of the first, which, thanks to a kind Providence, have duly come to hand, that it is now nearly three months since you have heard from us. Much good and much evil may befall in three months! Much good have I truly to be grateful for: and chiefly that your life and health have been thus precious in the sight of the Lord, and that you have received honour at the hand of man (of which our good Dr. Wilson made suitable mention in his prayer last Sabbath); and, as I humbly trust, approval from Him who erreth not. “I have read your letters over and over again, till they have fallen to pieces with the continual dropping of my hot tears; but every syllable is imprinted on my heart. You did not believe your `sister would waste her sensibility, the precious food of life, in moping melancholy.' Oh, Eliot, how much better must I have appeared to you than I was! I have been all my life a hypocrite. You believed `my mind had a self-rectifying power,' and I imposed this belief on you! I am ready, now, to bow my head in the dust for it. `Love,' said your letter, `can never be incurable when it is a disease: that is to say, when its object is unworthy.' Ah, my dear brother, there was your fatal mistake. It was I that was unworthy—it was your simple sister that, in her secret, unconfessed thoughts, believed he loved her, knowing all the while that his lot was cast with the high, the gifted, the accomplished—with such as Isabella Linwood, and not with one so humble in condition, so little graced by art as I am. I do not blame him. Heaven knows I do not. `Self-rectifying power!' Eliot, talk to the reed, that has been uprooted and borne away by the tides of the ocean, of its `self-rectifying power!' ” Eliot's maliness was vanquished, and he wept like a child over his sister's letter. He reproached himself for having left home. He bitterly reproached himself for not having foreseen the danger of her long, exclusive, and confiding intercourse with Meredith. He was almost maddened when he thought of the perils to which she must have been exposed, and of his utter inability to save her from one of them. The only solacing thought that occurred to him was the extreme improbability that her fragile and exhausted frame could support the fatigues she must encounter, and that even now, while he wept over her letter (a fortnight had elapsed since it was written), her gentle spirit might have entered upon its eternal rest. —I have just chanced to call at a poor blacksmith's, who, with his worthy family, is at death's door with a protracted intermittent. It seems to me that port, like that I drank with you yesterday, might restore them. As the man looks like too independent an American to beg a favour, I have taken the liberty to give him this order for a bottle or two, telling him, with a poetic truth, that I had wine in your cellar. It is your own fault if all your friends feel that they have a property in your possessions. Adieu.” —Nathan Palmer, a lieutenant in the service of your king, has been taken in my camp as a spy, condemned as a spy, and will be hung as a spy. “I have received your note, Jasper; I do not reply to it hastily; hours of watchfulness and reflection at the bedside of my friend have given the maturity of years to my present feeling. I have loved you, I confess it now; not by a treacherous blush, but calmly, deliberately, in my own handwriting, without faltering or emotion of any sort. Yes, I have loved you, if a sentiment springing from a most attachable nature, originating in the accidental intercourse of childhood, fostered by pride, nurtured by flattery, and exaggerated by an excited imagination, can be called love.
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