LETTER IV.
TO E. HARTLEY.
New-York, March 26.
If I thought the temper which dictated
your last letter would continue beyond the hour
or the night, I should indeed be unhappy. My
life has known much sorrow, but the sharpest
pangs will be those arising from the sense of
your unworthiness.
In my eyes marriage is no sensual or selfish
bargain. I will never vow to honour the man
who deserves only my contempt; and my esteem
can be secured only by a just and disinterested
conduct. Perhaps esteem is not the only requisite
to marriage. Of that I am not certain; but
I know that it is an indispensible requisite to
love. I cannot love any thing in you but excellence.
Infatuation will render you hateful
or pitiable in my eyes. I shall hasten to forget
you, and for that end shall estrange myself
from your society, and drop your correspondence.
You know what it is that reason prescribes
to you with regard to Miss Wilmot. If you
cannot ardently and sincerely seek her presence,
and find in the happiness which she will
derive from union with you, sufficient motives
to make you zealously solicit that union, you
are unworthy not merely of my love, but of
my esteem. Henceforth I will know you not.
Let me not have reason to charge you with
hypocrisy, or to consider your love for me as
the mere child of sensuality and selfishness.
You have often told me that you desire my
happiness above all things. That you love me
for my own sake. Your sincerity and rectitude
are now put to the test. Do not belie your
professions, by a blind and unjust decision.
Allow me to judge in what it is that my happiness
consists, and prove your attachment to
me by promoting my happiness.
Misguided friend! What is it you want?
To gain your end by exciting my pity? Suppose
the end should be thus accomplished;
suppose I should become your wife merely to
save your life, to prevent hazards and temptations
to which my rejection might expose you.
Mournful, indeed, full of anguish and of tears,
would be the day which should make me your
bride. My act would be a mere submission to humiliating
and painful necessity. I should look
to reap from such an alliance, nothing but repinings
and sorrow. By soliciting my hand,
by consenting to ratify a contract made on such
principles, you would irretrievably forfeit my
esteem. My condition would be the most disastrous
that can betide a human being. I
should be bound, beyond the power of loosening
my bonds, to one whom I
despised.
I am, indeed, in no danger of acting upon
these principles. I shall never so little consult
my own dignity and yours, as to accept your
hand through compassion. I am not unacquainted
with the schemes which your foolish
despondency has suggested to you. I know
very well what alternatives you have sometimes
resolved to offer me; of compliance with
your wishes, or of banishing you to the desert,
and dissolving that connection between my
father and you, which is so advantageous to
yourself and your sisters. Fie upon you I
Even to have entertained such thoughts fixes
a stain upon your character not easily effaced.
Nothing but the hope that the illusion is transitory,
and that sober reflection will, in a short
time, relieve you from the yoke of such cowardly
and ignoble designs, prevents this from
being the last token of friendship you will ever
receive from
