 | Tales of the good woman |  |
2. THE DRUNKARD.
Big with his sister. He hath lost the reins;
Is outlaw'd of himself. All kind of ill
Does with his liquor slide into his veins:
The Drunkard forfeits man, and doth divest
All worldly right, save what he claims as beast.
George Herbert.
I have determined to employ the last miserable
remnant of a life now about closing in infamy and
shame, in bequeathing to the world an example,
which I trust, may make some amends for the
miseries I have heaped on every being with whom
I have been nearly and dearly connected in this
life. It is the only atonement I can offer to my
fellow creatures, whose very nature I have disgraced
by my crimes; to my Maker before whom I
must shortly appear in the nakedness of beastly
depravity.
I was born in one of the States south of the
Potomac, and am the only son of an opulent
family, claiming some little distinction from two
or three generations of gentility. I will not mention
its name; I have disgraced it enough, God
populous neighbourhood, and here I remained at
home, receiving from my parents, as well as my
sisters who were all older than myself, those mistaken
indulgences, which so often have a fatal
influence over the destinies of only sons. I learned
to think myself always in the right, because
in all disputes or conflicts with my sisters, they
were obliged to yield; fancied myself a man at
fourteen, because I was allowed to have my own
way; and a prodigy of genius, because I was
altogether unaware of the extent of my ignorance.
I do not recollect that at this time I felt any propensity
to the vice, which has been fatal to myself
and all those whom the ties of existence had
gathered around me. I only know that I was
allowed to mix occasionally, and indeed as often
as I pleased, with those of the country people,
whose examples, if they operated on me at all,
could only do me harm. I went to all the frolics
in the neighbourhood, good, bad, and indifferent,
where the country lads to many things which
though not perhaps unbecoming in persons of
their class and habits, cannot be indulged in by
persons of mine, for any length of time, without
more or less injury to that delicacy of feeling,
those proprieties of manner, and those nice, sensitive
principles, which constitute the distinctions
of a gentleman Young men destined to move
in that sphere of life which places them above the
their company and amusements, since by associating
with vulgar idlers, they almost invariably approximate
to their level, adopt their manners, acquire
a taste for their amusements, and only sink
the lower, from the height of their descent. One
of the lowest, the meanest, and most depraved of
mankind, is the man of education, refinement, and
accomplishments, transmuted into a low and dissipated
blackguard. The impulse which carries
him over the barriers of habit, education, and example,
which impels him to overleap the gulf between
him and vulgar vice, cannot, without a
miracle, stop short of perdition.
I was a little soiled in the white ermine of
the soul, before I left home to finish my education
at college, at the age of sixteen. I was a tall
premature boy, for whom nature, as I verily believe,
had done her part; for in comparing my
perceptions, and the power of expressing them,
with those of my fellow students, I found myself
by no means deficient. The college was situated
in the centre of a great city; and great cities, as
many people believe, are the most dangerous
places in the world for young men. It may be so;
they have proved so to me. But I doubt the first
seeds of my undoing were sown in the country.
My family, connexions, and fortune, placed me in
a situation to choose my place in society; a choice
which has puzzled many a young man, and a
to death At one time I had thoughts of becoming
a ladies' man and a dandy. Would to heaven
I had! for it is better to be nothing than what I
am. Having accidentally got credit for a college
exercise, I narrowly missed becoming a scholar.
I shall never cease to regret not having done so;
for a man that lives among books, for the most part
keeps innocent, if not improving company. His
pursuits are quiet and guiltless; his pleasures arise
from intellectual sources; his excitements are too
gentle to allure him into the commission of crimes
for their gratification; his object is fame, and his
reward if successful, immortality.
But I was diverted from this pursuit, by hearing
a very sensible, successful, unenlightened old
gentleman, of whose daughter I was a sort of admirer,
lay it down as a maxim, that knowledge was
an idle drone, and that every scribbler ended in
being a beggar, and dying in a garret or jail. He
could never be brought to believe in the miracle
of three or four thousand guineas being given for a
story book, or comprehend the phenomenon of an
author becoming rich by his works. While I was
thus vacillating between bad and good, I one day
met with a country fellow, a sort of half and half
squire, with whom I had occasionally associated
before I left home. He informed me that he had
brought to town some capital game cocks, to fight
a grand main on Christmas eve, which was fast
earnestly, that at length I consented, as it was not
against the college statutes, which only prohibited
going to the theatre. I was partly prompted
by curiosity, and partly by the smack of an old
relish for such sports acquired in the country.
When the time came, I dressed myself as little
like a gentleman as possible, not to disgrace the
company and the occasion, and went with my patron
to the place of blood. It was in a dungeon
far under ground, at the extremity of a long, dark
alley, running out from a street of infamous fame,
and infamous name. On approaching it, nothing
could be heard but the distant, half smothered
crowing of cocks, defying each other from their
bags, mingled with a confused hum, which deepened
as we approached. At length we came to
a half decayed door, at which my companion gave
three distinct and well defined taps, at intervals of
about ten or fifteen seconds. The door slowly
opened, and we passed along a paved pathway
about twenty or thirty yards, till we came to a
flight of steps which we descended, and my guide
again gave three taps, in the same manner, and
with the same intervals as before. After a little
delay, accompanied by a total cessation of the
hum we had heard on approaching, the door was
unlocked and unbolted with great deliberation,
and we emerged from total darkness into an extensive
diffusing the brilliancy of a ball room.
My companion was welcomed in the most cordial
style, and with a choice selection of most
affectionate curses, by a number of equivocal
figures, that looked as if they might have once been
gentlemen. His arrival was the signal for the commencement
of bloody and mortal strife. Bets began
to be offered and accepted; the trimmers, the gaffers,
the weighers, the pitters, and the judge, all
commenced the exercise of their high functions, and
all was high and busy preparation. The gallant
combatants, like heroes about to enter the lists, in
presence and in honour of some beloved lady,
smoothed their rich, varied plumes, crected their
beautiful necks, flashed menace from their fiery
eyes, and crowed the shrill defiance. They seemed
to know and to glory in their destiny, and the
moment they caught sight of each other, was the
signal for a struggle to escape from the hands of
the pitter, and begin the battle. A strange and
singular instinct this, which prompts the animal
to attack only his own species, and live in peace
with all others!
While the preliminaries were going on, I had
leisure to look around me. I had got into a curious
circle. Here was a tall, raw-boned Dutchman
from Staaten Island, dressed in homespun,
and altogether so rusty in appearance, that I took
him for a subaltern, who was some way or other
therefore, was my surprise to hear him
offer a bet of five hundred dollars, to a portly,
well looking person, whose dress and deportment
proclaimed the man of breeding, and whose open
countenance gave pretty sure indication that he
was destined to be the dupe of the sages of this
Pandemonium. I could not help being moved
with a kind feeling, the moment I caught his good
natured eye, and fool as I was, almost determined
to go and caution him against his associates. But
I soon found that he was no novice in the sport,
and learned from the familiar manner in which the
lowest of the sporting crew addressed him, that he
was domesticated here, and had in some measure
sunk to the level of his company. I grew intimate
with him in the course of my devotions at
this infernal shrine, and found that with this
strange attachment to this strange amusement, he
was a man of excellent principles, kind feelings,
and tender affections. It is as strange as it is
true. In process of time, as might be expected,
he was ruined by his good friends of the den. A
fat butcher, with eyes like a ferret; a little oily
tobacconist, they called Balty; and the sharp
faced, raw-boned Staaten Islander, shared most of
his spoils. What indeed surprised me, was to see
the sums risked by fellows who seemed scarcely
worth a suit of decent clothes. I believe, however,
the truth was, they only risked when the odds
is, but there are certain favoured beings of a baser
stamp, with whom a gentleman stands no chance
in betting, and who seem to know by intuition
which fowl is to conquer, and which horse to win.
The master spirit of this Pandemonium, however,
was a merry old gentleman, in the vigour of
a green autumn, whose spirits animated the whole
circle, and made the keenest betters laugh, even
sometimes when they lost. He too bore about
him distinctive marks of once at least having been
used to better company, and higher amusements,
and his example, together with that of the good
natured looking gentleman I mentioned before,
went a great way in reconciling me to a place, for
which I at first felt no little abhorrence. It is my
design to exhibit in all their disgusting features,
and colouring, the scenes in which I became an
actor; the gradations by which, step by step, I
reached the goal of ruin, disgrace, and remorse.
I mean to give them in all the strength of colouring
of which I am capable; to present, in short,
a picture which shall create unmingled disgust, in
the mind of every reader, who is not sunk as low
as I have fallen. It is not my design to write a
pleasing or interesting tale. It is necessary to
my purpose, that I make myself and my story a
beacon and a warning.
By degrees I came to relish the company and
amusements of a cock-pit; to enjoy the furious
the jests of the old gentleman upon their expiring
struggles; the blood, the feathers; the curses of
the losers, and the exultation of the winners. I
became a bold better, and grew confidentially
intimate with the ferret eyed butcher, the rawboned
Staaten Islander, and little smooth faced
Balty. They became my fast friends, and took
every opportunity of cautioning me against the
arts of each other. I fancied myself at last a
knowing one, after being enlisted under the special
mentorship of honest Balty, who always told
me what cock to bet on, and as I long afterwards
learned, always bet on his antagonist. I lost my
money; I lost my rest; my character among my
equals; my station in society; above all, I lost
for ever all those delicious feelings, those innocent
sources of pleasure, those aspiring hopes and
anticipations, and that heaven born ambition,
which animates youth to reach at things above, instead
of stooping to things below them.
What would my poor father and mother have
said and thought, had they seen me emerging at
the dawn of day, from this obscure den, covered
with feathers; haggard with want of rest, or red
in the face with the liquor I had swallowed in the
course of the night? But, thank heaven! they
never saw me. They died without even suspecting
my swift deterioration, or anticipating the disgrace
I was to bring upon their name. It may be
my college exercises. I began to descend, and at
every examination approached nearer and nearer
to the tail of my class. The better sort of lads
drew off from my society; the professors cautioned,
lectured, and threatened in vain; they could
not touch the feelings of one who thought more
of the approbation of his friend Balty, than of a
diploma. From the foot of the second, I was degraded
into the lowest class, from which I was at
length expelled, for reiterated instances of negligence
and impertinence.
It is impossible for me to say that this disgrace
did not make me feel for a time. I was now approaching
towards manhood, and there is I believe,
a period in the life of the most dissipated young
men, in which they may be said to be balancing
almost equally between regeneration and perdition.
It is then that it would seem to depend on chance
or fate, over which they have no apparent control,
whether they are to retrieve their lost ground, and
rise to the level to which nature and education
seem to entitle them, or sink never to rise again.
I have often thought, that had it fallen to my lot
at this time, to meet with somebody I loved and
respected, who would have taken me by the hand
and reasoned with me kindly, I might possibly
have been a far different man, from what I afterwards
became. Perhaps I only seek to palliate
my crimes, and soothe my harrassed, guilty soul,
I was a rational being intrusted by my Maker with
the direction of my own conduct—my destiny was
in my own hands, and I alone am accountable for
my fate. No kind friend interposed; no one came
to hold out a hand, and arrest me in the swift descent.
Instead of such an one, came my friend
Balty, who carried me to a grand main, where as
usual I betted by his directions, and as usual lost
almost every bet. But still Balty had the reputation
of an honest good creature, and another friend
of mine, an experienced gaffer and pitter, swore
upon his soul, that Balty was the most unlucky
man in the world, for though no man could compare
with him in judgment, yet somehow or other
he was always wrong.
Thus, I continued in my downhill course. But
still I did not go so fast as might have been expected.
I sometimes had the power to arrest my
career—to stop short—yea, even sometimes to
climb a little way up the hill again. But he who
climbs a little way, and slides back again, sinks
only the lower for his exertion. The mental effort
if finally unsuccessful, ends too often in a complete
moral insensibility. Why is it that the temptations
to vice are at our feet every step we take,
sensible to the eyes, the ears, the palate, and the
touch, while the allurements to virtue are so often
distant, if not invisible? Why—but the answer
is at hand, and easy. It is that there may be some
one or the other equally palpable and powerful in
their appeals to the senses, there would be no
merit in being good. It is the difficulty, which
causes virtue to be crowned with everlasting rewards.
Notwithstanding the life I led, I was not altogether
debased. It is not all at once that the
soul is stripped of its regalia. It is by little and
little, that it is cast away; although to the world,
it appears perhaps, that the wretched delinquent
has made but one step to the consummation of his
follies and crimes. I still preserved the exterior,
and the manners of a gentleman, and in the day
time at least, associated with men and women far
better than myself. My habits had not so far
changed me from what I was, that either my relatives
or friends, had turned their backs upon me.
I still cherished a liking for books, at times; read
sometimes the whole of a rainy day; visited young
ladies occasionally, and was reckoned by their
mammas not altogether unworthy of an invitation
to a tea party. Above all, I had not actually committed
any overt act, such as is, or ought to be
followed by the loss of caste. I had, it is true, a
habit of taking brandy and water, at times; but I
felt no want of it as a stimulant, and the habit
was by no means confirmed. In short, when I
came of age, and took possession of a handsome
estate, I might still, if I would, have taken the
seemed to have destined me. But my
evil genius, or rather my evil habits and passions
were at length to have their final and complete
triumph.
An idle young man, with no decided taste for
some innocent or praiseworthy pursuit, with a fortune
at his command, and in a large city which
bristles with temptations, is placed in a situation
of great peril. He has not only his own wayward
heart to battle with, but he is almost invariably
assailed by the seductions of others. There is
a certain class of men in great cities, who manage
to keep just within the pale of decent society, notwithstanding
their habits, and modes of living,
render them unworthy of the association. They
generally are the dry and worthless branches of
some respectable family, left with a patrimony
just sufficient to raise them above the absolute
necessity of useful employment, yet not enough to
support their extravagances for any length of
time. They flutter gaily for a summer, like the
grasshoppers, and like them find themselves destitute
when the autumn of life approaches. They
begin by losing their money from inexperience,
and end by preying upon the inexperience of
others. They dress well, preserve a respectable
exterior, and study the refinements of manners, to
enable them the better to practice their deceptions.
Of all men in the world the sharper has
unmarried, for wives and children are mere
incumbrances to men who must seek their prey,
now at a fashionable hotel, and anon at a fashionable
watering place.
These men are always on the lookout for young
heirs, with more money than wit or experience.
They found me, and what was worse they found
me prepared for their purposes. I joined, nothing
loth, a club of these veteran whist players, which
met almost every night, the principal members of
which from long habit and experience, I verily
believe, had reduced it to a matter of certainty,
that in the course of an evening, or rather a night,
they could win my money. They did not pack
the cards, or shuffle unfairly, nor exchange winks
with their partners, nor tread on each other's
toes under the table; but they took advantage of
those mysterious, unaccountable runs of ill luck,
which so often beset a player; taunted my losses,
undervalued my skill, stimulated me with drink to
double my bets in the hopes of making up my
losses; and in short, by those various arts so well
known to experienced gentlemen players, contrived
in the course of one single year, to strip me of all
my ready money.
I then mortgaged my lands, preferring this method,
by the advice of one of the most experienced
members of the club. “It is better than selling,”
said he, “for it gives you the appearance of being
known men possess in this way, aye, and enjoy all
the advantages of hundreds and thousands, who
did not in reality own an acre.” So I mortgaged
my estate from time to time, and from time to
time lost my money. In fine, I became poor, and
one hot summer's day, it came into my mind to visit
my sisters, who lived on a part of my father's estate
in the country, in peace and innocence; doting
on me as an only brother, the hope of the family,
and totally unsuspicious of the career I was running.
At this time, even at this time, if I knew
myself, I still had about me the raw materials of a
gentleman. I had never descended to any of the
arts and finesses of a gambler; I had never forfeited
my word with an equal, or my engagements
with an inferior; I had not as yet thrown my gauntlet
at the foot of the world and declared myself independent
of the grand inquest of society; and
though my habits were decidedly bad, they were
not confirmed beyond the reach of vigorous and
manly effort. I was neither depraved nor debased
past all recovery, and notwithstanding my occasionally
keen and bitter stings of conscience, I
was not yet driven to drinking as a refuge from
their pangs.
In this state I paid a visit to my sisters, who
received me with an affectionate joy that went to
my heart of hearts. They admired me beyond
any other human being, and they loved me still
flatteries of my sisters, and the sacred influence of
quiet repose, of woods, waters, and meadows,
birds, echoes, and all the full, combined harmony
of nature, for a while awakened in my heart the
rural feeling so nearly allied to virtue. I began
by degrees to relish a stroll with my sisters along
the little stream that skirted their grounds; to enjoy
the moonlight, and the wandering glories overhead;
and tried to take a pleasure in looking on,
or partaking in the merry hay-makings of the season.
What surprised me most of all, was the phenomenon
of being able to sleep soundly at night,
without sitting up three fourths of it; a thing I had
not been able to do in town for more than three
years past.
It is possible, had it pleased heaven to permit
me to remain here undisturbed during the remainder
of the season, that I might have become a new
man. But empty, unsatisfactory, and wearisome,
as is the eternal repetition of the stimulants to dissipation,
they are gifted with an accursed fascination.
Even if they did not, as they most assuredly
do, carry with them their own appropriate stings,
their victim is bitterly punished in the incapacity
ever to enjoy those gentle pleasures; those innocent
domestic endearments, and that sweet undulating
calm, which all united, constitute a contented
and happy being. I confess I was sometimes
partially benumbed for want of some little flow
Whether I should eventually have conquered the
habits of dissipation, in the habits of ease and retirement,
I shall never know. About a month
after leaving the city, I received a letter from my
particular friend, one of the principal members of
the club, to whom, I owed a couple of thousands,
which he always assured me I might take my own
time to pay, dunning me for money in the most
genteel manner possible. Necessity—a run of
luck, &c. &c. &c.
I had not a tenth of the sum in the world, and to
my shame be it told, it was the absolute impossibility
of living any longer in town, that had
driven me to visit my sisters in the country. My
estate was already mortgaged for its full value, and
this being a debt of honour, must be paid. From
the moment of receiving this letter, the country
lost its charms for me. Cool shades, quiet glens,
green meadows, murmuring streams, warbling
birds, chirping insects, and all the blessed looking,
happy objects of nature, assort but ill with an unquiet,
dissatisfied spirit. Noise, bustle, and a
perpetual succession of confused and various objects,
accord much better with the mood of a man
at war with himself. My sisters soon noticed my
depression, and with the querulous solicitude of
female affection, wearied and worried me with enquiries.
At first I was fretful, and continually
brought tears into their mild blue eyes, by repulsing
always with an impatience their affection little
merited. At length, one day, the fiend who is
ever on the watch for the moment in which man
may best be tempted to his ruin—one day, when I
had just received another dunning letter from my
friend, an idea came across me that at first made
me shudder, as if a dagger of ice had been run
through me. I was the sole executor of my
father's estate, and the property of my sisters, had
been left entirely under my control, since they became
of age.
I mean to lay bare the inmost recesses of my
polluted heart—to deny nothing—disguise nothing
—extenuate nothing. But I hope to be credited,
wretch as I am, this once, when I say that the first
idea of appropriating a part of the property thus
left with such confiding affection entirely in my
power, came across me, I drove it away with all
the indignation it deserved. But it came back
again and again, always accompanied with new
motives, and new palliatives, till by degrees it became
familiar “Your mortgaged estates,” it
said, or seemed to say—“are rising in value, and
you will be able to repay this small sum, long before
it is known that you have used it. Your sisters
have no occasion for the money, and as they
probably will never marry, you will be their heir at
last.” At other times, it seemed to say as it
grew every day bolder—“Even suppose you never
than for brothers to borrow, mismanage, or waste
their sisters' inheritance—you will have enough to
keep you in countenance, if the worst come to the
worst.” Why should I detail step by step, inch by
inch, hairs-breadth by hairs-breadth, the progress I
made towards this infamous determination? I
was driven to it at last, by a third letter threatening
me with being denounced at the club, unless I
promptly paid the debt to my friend. To escape
the disgrace of an indiscretion, I committed a
crime. The shame of meeting a set of men who
had no claim upon my affection or gratitude, for a
moment blinded me to the guilt of defrauding those
who had both. Had I asked my sisters for the
sum, they would have thrown that, and all they possessed
into my lap. But the pride that stooped to
defraud them, shrunk from the degradation of asking
for what it could steal. Such too often is man,
and such was I.
I bade my sisters farewell. They hung around,
and kissed me, with tears of pure and innocent
love, for their hearts seemed all concentrated upon
me. They asked me to come again soon, and
made me promise I would. I did not dare to look
them in the face, nor could I respond to their tears
and embraces, for the purpose I was upon, made
their endearments intolerable. We have never
met since. They have sought me in my misery
and degradation; they have proffered me all that
out in infamy; and entreated to share my cell.
But I never could bear to meet their forgiveness,
and fled from them, as from the wrath of heaven.
From the moment I robbed my sisters, and only
from that moment, I felt myself degraded past all
recovery, lost beyond redemption. I had suffered
myself as it were, wilfully to be deceived into the
commission of a crime, mean and despicable beyond
all other meanness; but the moment it was
past beyond the reach of recall, the sophistry glared
me in the face, and I saw my degradation at full
length. I did not stop here, for who can say that
he can stop, when he has placed himself one single
step, on the slippery, down hill path of infamy.
Anxious, feverishly anxious to replace the past robbery,
I risked more—lost more—and robbed my
sisters of more to pay the debt of honour. I did
not lose—I have never lost, nor shall I ever—the
capacity to feel the keenest remorse for my evil
actions. Had I been able to steel my heart to the
pangs of conscience, and to bear up, as some do,
against the sense of hopeless degradation, I had
not been what I am, nor, strange as may appear
the paradox, should I have been half so bad, had I
at first been a great deal worse.
Wherever I went, I bore about me this intolerable
feeling of irretrievable disgrace, and to escape
from it, I plunged deeper into the gulf. I
could not bend or force my heart to a submission,
horrible depressions of self-conviction. I sought
new stimulants, in a more frequent indulgence in
the use of wine. It answered for a little, a very
little while; but the momentary sunshine would
pass away, and leave only a deeper gloom. Still,
I was not a sot; the habit had not yet fastened itself
on me, nor did I carry on my face or person,
those infallible indications which mark the victims
of this beastly vice. I could at any time abstain,
and so far, my destiny was in my power. By degrees,
I made deeper and deeper encroachments
on the fortunes of my sisters, and the period was
fast approaching, when my shame must inevitably
come to light. I was becoming reckless and desperate,
when a lucky chance, as I then thought it,
threw in my way a mode of retrieving my affairs,
and preserving my reputation
I had considerable advantages of person, and a
habit of keeping myself always neat, and fashionably
dressed. Even when I spent my nights at the
cock-pit, and came forth in the morning covered
with feathers. I never failed to appear immediately
after in the garb of a gentleman. I had also a natural
and off-hand gallantry in my disposition, which
made me acceptable to the most modest and well-bred
females, whenever I chose to exert it, as I
often did. As a proof that I was not altogether a
brute, there never was a period of my life, up to the
time I have now arrived at, in which I could not
and make myself agreeable to them.
Accident about this time threw me into the
society of a young gentlewoman, of good family,
and possessing a handsome fortune in her own
right. Her person was attractive—almost beautiful,
and her face shone bright in the lustre of a pair
of intelligent black eyes, matched, or rather contrasted
with a fine set of white teeth. Hitherto I
had never thought of marrying. The life I had
led, had in fact made me incapable of loving a virtuous
woman as she deserves to be loved. Excesses
had blunted all my finer feelings, and I contemplated
every handsome female, with the eyes of a
glutton, or an epicure. Let no woman who values
her happiness, unite herself to a reformed debauchee,
who has long past the age of unbridled youth.
The heat of youthful blood, unrestrained by experience,
may, and often does, precipitate a boy
into the most dangerous excesses; but his transgressions
are those of inexperience, not habit; and
if he returns to the path of rectitude in time, he
may still save something valuable from the tempest
in which he has been tossed. But it is otherwise
with him whom years of estrangement from the
society of the worthy, and years of fellowship with
the worthless, have disfranchised from all communion
with the pure susceptibilities of woman,
and rendered absolutely, and forever incapable of
knowing or estimating her worth. Such a man
of society, but he will have lost in his long
wanderings, what he can never regain; the capacity
to enjoy the innocent endearments of virtuous
love, and the gentle attractions of the domestic
fire-side. But the fondest lovers may be said to be
strangers to each other before marriage. Perhaps
it is best it should be so, since it is often as mischievous
to know too much as too little.
Finding my society agreeable to this lady, who I
shall call Amelia, the idea by degrees occurred to
me that she would be an advantageous speculation,
as we used to say at the club. Her person, as I
said before, was attractive, but that did not much
matter; and her fortune was liberal, which mattered
a great deal. She was young, romantic, and
somewhat buoyant in spirits. I played the hypocrite
finely. We rode out together through the
beautiful landscapes of a most beautiful country,
and she greeted every murmuring brook, twittering
bird, and rocky glen, with a vivacity of admiration,
that would have called up a corresponding feeling
in the heart of any one, but one like me, labouring
under a sense of degradation, combined with the
lethargy of worn out sensibilities. She had neither
father or mother living; but she had friends,
who, though ignorant of the extent of my fall, still
knew enough of my habits to think me unworthy
of her hand. But young women who are rich, and
mistress of themselves, are, I believe, not apt to be
and believing, as Amelia did, that they wronged
me, she was only the more determined to do me
right. She consented to trust me with herself, her
happiness, her destiny in this world, I might almost
say in the world to come, and we were married.
At the moment I was about to be put in possession
of youth, beauty, and fortune, I was not happy,
I could not disguise from myself that I was receiving
a victim, not a bride, to my arms; that I
had played the hypocrite and the villain, in disguising
from her the state of my fortune, and affecting
a character, now no longer mine. She
strenuously insisted on having my sisters for
bridemaids; but I resisted at first with feigned
excuses, and at length, with an obstinate violence,
which caused her to look at me with a keen scrutinizing
glance, and heave a sigh, too true a signal
of her future fate. I took her a tour during the
summer; visited my estate, and heard her warmly,
and seriously propose that we should settle down
there, and spend the rest of our days, without
sinking into the earth. We went to the springs,
and I take some credit to myself, that for three
weeks that we staid there, I neither flirted with
other men's wives, nor sat up after four o'clock in
the morning at whist. In short, I was the model
of a good husband, and my wife the happiest of
women; at least she said nothing to the contrary.
For some months after we returned to town for
drank nor gamed; and the connexions of my wife
began to give me credit for a thorough reformation.
But, alas! where the fiend is within, the
fiend will come out at last. About this time one
of my sisters married, and it became necessary that
her portion should be forthcoming. I had now a
man to deal with, and farther deception became
impossible. The crisis of my fate arrived.
My generous, noble hearted wife, had peremptorily
resisted all the cautions of her relatives to
have her fortune settled on herself. No, she always
replied, no, I trust him with my happiness,
and my fortune shall go with it. It rested with
me now, either to tell her candidly my situation,
and throw myself on her generosity; or to make
use of her fortune secretly to replace that of my
sister's. That strange pride which clings even to
guilt and degradation prompted me to the latter.
To replace the money of which I had robbed my
sister, I robbed my wife of that, which after events
proved, she would have given me with all her
heart.
Up to this period, I had loved Amelia as well
as it was possible for me to love a delicate virtuous
woman. Her affection, and the complete acquiescence
to my wishes which she exhibited on
all occasions, had won all that was left of a heart
seared in the fires of mad voluptuousness. But
from the moment I robbed, I hated her. With
perpetration of injuries, I considered my wife a
spy, prying into my actions, and at every moment
on the eve of discovering the deception I had
practiced, the robbery I had committed. All
confidence was now at an end, on my part; all
pleasure in her society; all enjoyment in her arms.
I began to estrange myself from home, and by degrees
to drink drams, to keep up the courage of
dastardly guilt, and make me sufficiently a brute,
to meet her after my nightly orgies without sinking
into the earth. Now it was that my downhill
course became more rapid than ever. I fell in
company with some of my old associates of the
club; renewed my intimacy with Balty and the
ferret eyed butcher; got half fuddled, was robbed
and cheated every night, and returned to my
home every morning, more of a beast than I left it
in the evening.
To meet these perpetual losses, I made other
drafts upon my wife's fortune, and to dull the
sense of infamy, I drank deeper of brandy. Sometimes
I rallied the remnant of the divinity that was
within me, and abstained both from gambling and
drinking for days and nights, sometimes weeks together;
but again I was carried away by impulses
and habits only the more impetuous for their momentary
restraint. My wife behaved like an angel;
she kept my secret, and neither betrayed me
to her friends, nor uttered a reproach. She did
than two thirds of her fortune; but she knew what
was far more difficult to be borne, that I neglected
her person, and dishonoured both her and myself
by indulging in the lowest dissipation. Yet she
bore all in silence. Had she been more of a woman,
it had been better perhaps for me.
During this period we had two children, a boy
and a girl. I could not bear to look at them, from
the moment their little eyes began to know me. I
had injured them as well as their mother, and bad
as I was, I never could bear the looks of those I
had wronged. To the virtuous and happy father,
these little strangers, form those gentle links that
bind him the closer to his home, and inspire new
feelings of gratitude and goodness. But it was
not so with me. I was rapidly becoming an outcast
from the domestic circle; an alien from all
that is good, and beautiful, and elegant. My heart
was already one half rotten, the other half turned
to stone; my tastes, my propensities, my habits
were now all assuming the same hue of deep bottomless
infamy, of irretrievable debasement. My
friends, for I still had estimable friends, whom the
virtues of my father and mother had gained me,
now began to draw off one by one, to treat me with
coolness, distant civility, neglect, and finally to
pass me without notice. Few men that have their
senses left them, can bear the contempt of their
friends, and know that they have deserved it, without
For me, I was always as proud as Lucifer. The
more degraded I felt, the more obstinate I bebecame,
and when I could not disguise from myself
that I merited the detestation of all the world,
I only the more resolutely determined to brave
that world, and become worse and worse, out of
pure spite. Thus does the nature of man become
perverted, until at last he comes to cherish a
gloomy mistaken pride, in more than justifying the
scorn and contempt of his honest associates. From
getting intoxicated at night, I proceeded to getting
intoxicated by day. As the sense of degradation,
the consciousness of my approaching fall, my
irretrievable, eternal ruin, pressed upon me only
the more keenly, in the intervals of oblivion.
I flew to the bottle, and drank oblivion again. Yet
sometimes my watchful angel would interfere, and
more than once have I madly dashed the glass to
pieces on the hearth, in a paroxysm of momentary
and desperate resolution. I would describe the
dreadful chaos of my mind, while under the influence
of the destroying bowl, that those who
read my story may shrink with horror, from the terrible
detail, and learn if possible, how hopeless,
how fatal the attempt to quell the raging surges of
guilt and remorse, by pouring hot inflammable spirits
upon them. At first indeed the attempt may produce
a tempory obscurity; a leaden numbness of
intellect, through which objects appear confused
not so keen. Sometimes it may bring about a
deep yet unrefreshing sleep, from which the miserable
drunkard awakes, only to enjoy the bitter
contrast of a refreshed remorse preying on a
weakened body. But by degrees, even these
miserable solaces fade away, and drunkenness, instead
of dulling the sense of guilt, or misery, only
sharpens the pang, by giving a temporary life and
vivacity to the mental perceptions. Their indistinctness
is overbalanced by their increased vigour.
The next step is still more deplorable, when
habit at length renders the wretch almost callous
to the influence of the poison, and excessive indulgence
produces not oblivion, but phrenzy. Too
truly will the remainder of my story exemplify that
I speak from woful experience.
The depredations I had committed on the inheritance
of my children, were now brought to light,
by that inevitable train of events, which never
fails, sooner or later, to bring the villain to his
reckoning. Nearly at the same time, my estate
was advertised by the sheriff, on a foreclosure of
the mortgage. It was thus discovered that I was
a beggar when I married, and that I had since
become a scoundrel. Even my unbending pride,
aided by the maddening bowl, could not stand
this. I could not endure the sight of those, who
from having once looked up to me, now shunned
me with averted eyes, or gave me only glances of
his own estimation, can bear the scorn of his
equals; the very pickpocket aspires to an equality
with his fellow pickpockets, and will quarrel for
precedence, like a courtier.
One day I happened to meet an old acquaintance,
in company with two or three gentlemen, in
such a way that it was impossible for him to pretend
not to see me, or for me to avoid him, without
actually sneaking away. I accosted him, but he
took no notice of me. “I believe you don't know
me,” said I. “O yes, I do know you,” he replied,
and turned on his heel. The emphasis he laid on
this little word was admirably expressive. I understood
it, and so did the gentlemen present.
My blood boiled, and the more, for knowing I deserved
this treatment. I poured forth a deluge of
invectives, and provoked him at length so far to
forget himself as to knock me down. That very
hour I sent him a challenge, for I was not yet low
enough to put up with a blow, and though I acknowledged
to my own heart that I deserved the
treatment I had received, still I burned for revenge.
It was in vain that the friend to whom the gentleman
applied to carry his answer, represented me
as unworthy of his notice, a man without any reputation
to lose, and to whom a blow could add
no deeper disgrace. “I should have thought of
all this before I gave the blow,” he replied. “Having
noticed him in the first instance, I have no
must offer either apology or atonement. I cannot
descend to beg his pardon, and there is but one
other alternative.”
“But he is a disgraced man.”
“True, yet I had no right to add to his disgrace.”
“He gave the first provocation.”
“Aye, but if he was so far degraded, as to be unworthy
of my anger, I had no business to be angry
with him. I forgot he was beneath my notice
when I gave the offence; I have no right now to
say he is so, when he demands satisfaction. I
know it is the morality of the day, to bandy reproaches,
to offend public decency, to outrage a
man's feelings in every possible way, and when
called upon for atonement, to plead either scruples
of conscience, or inferiority in the other party.
Neither this species of piety, nor this morality
satisfies me. I must meet this man.”
Under the influence of these mixed principles
of right and wrong, did this high spirited young
man consent to meet me. My habitual excesses
had so shattered my nervous system, that nothing
but copious draughts could steady my hand. I
drank deep that morning, and though my vision
was indistinct, my hand did not tremble. My second,
one of my old club companions, who was an
amateur of duelling—that is to say in the second,
not in the first person, gave me many special directions
how to hold my pistol, and when to fire.
ground, and every object swam before my eyes, as
if floating on the waves. I scarcely heard the
words, “one—two—three—fire!” I raised my pistol
mechanically, and yet—strange and inscrutable
dispensation!—my antagonist fell dead at
the first fire. A mother lost her only son,—an
amiable and virtuous woman an affectionate husband—and
three children became orphans—for
the wife survived the shock but a few months.
Thus, as my worthy second assured me triumphantly—thus,
and at this price, had I vindicated
my honour. What honour? The honour of an
unnatural brother, a brutal husband, an unfeeling
father, a beastly sot!
For some time after this magnificent exploit, I
was moody, and serious. I had a sort of indistinct
vision of blood, forever peering through the mists
of intoxication, and my nights became horrible,
whenever I ventured to go to bed otherwise than
in a state of brutal insensibility. Even then the
vision haunted my dreams, until I groaned in agony,
and awaked in such indescribable horrors, that
I used to get up at all times of the night, to resort
to the bowl, to bring on another brief interval of
oblivion. Thus it was that each new crime drove
me to still greater excesses, and that every new
excess only brought with it new punishment for
my crimes. By degrees I came to loathe the city,
to hate the face of man, and to cherish the wish
drink my fill, and revel in beastly excesses, free
from the prying eye of my fellow creatures, and
beyond the reach of the restraints of society.
The friends of my wife, gladly acceded to my
wishes, and a farm was purchased, in a distant
part of the country, where my family and myself
were unknown, which we went to take possession
of on a fine spring day. I remember it to this
hour; for languid, worn out, decayed as was my
frame, I still felt the bland influence of the fresh
air, playing about my forehead, and refreshing my
parched lungs, while the flowers, the verdure, the
birds, and all the combined beauties of a genial
sun, and a fair, far spreading landscape, once
more awakened me, and I think for the last time,
to feelings allied to my better days. Our new
home, was a little white house, shaded by an immense
weeping willow, that threw its wide declining
tendrils, completely over the roof, like a vast
umbrella. From the door, a little greensward
sloped down to a stream, something between a
river and a brook, that murmured its way through
a long meadow, dotted with gigantic elms, button
woods, and other vast children of our rich alluvions.
It was a pretty scene for a good man to repose
himself in, and seek his quiet way to heaven.
But for me! Paradise had no charms for the great
enemy of mankind, and rural scenes, and rural
quiet, are only stimulatives to him who lives on
revelling in one single vicious indulgence, left
within his reach, he will seize upon them with an
avidity sharpened by the absence of all other
temptations, and all other means of gratifying
evil appetites.
For me, I was past all hope, I might say all
possibility of being saved. Even if my moral
sense had not been perverted, if my mind had not
become irretrievably prostrated before the altar
of debasement, my physical frame, now so long
used to artificial stimulants, became almost inanimate
without them. Once, certain symptoms of
apoplexy, actually frightened me into a momentary
reform; and at other times when the swelling
of my legs gave indication of dropsy, I was alarmed
into a temporary abstinence. But the reader
would shudder, if I were capable of drawing a
picture in colours sufficiently glaring, to exhibit
the depression, the lassitude, the sinkings of the
very soul, that shook my body; or the indescribable
terrors that haunted me, sleeping and waking.
For some time past I had totally lost my appetite.
I had lived wholly on the stimulating bowl, and
when that was abandoned for a few days, my appetite
did not return. I absolutely sunk under
the privation. Let no one therefore venture upon
these excesses, in the flattering hope that he can
ever retrieve himself. “He cannot,” to use the
words of a writer whom I could once relish, “He
would not if he could.” From these temporary
abstinences, I returned like the dog to his vomit,
with a renewed zest, and with a sort of apology
for deeper excesses. But it is time to speak of
my poor wife and children.
From time to time, during the progress of the
scenes I have just been sketching, Amelia had
been strongly urged by her friends to leave me.
But she always mildly, yet peremptorily refused.
“My lot,” would she say, “was of my own choosing,
and whatever it may be, I have made up my
mind to bear it to the end.” Even this devotion
did not touch my heart, nor brute as I was, did I
thank her for it. On the contrary—believe it ye
virtuous husbands if ye can—I taunted her with
her ridiculous attachment, and scarcely a day
passed that I did not ask her with brutal barbarity
why she did not go to her friends. I did not want
her company, not I; nay, I wished to get rid of it
and never see her face again. He who shall read
this horrible tale, with the remnant of one spark
of virtuous feeling just expiring in his bosom, will
not believe it. Yet it is true as that there is a
Being above the stars, who for some unknown purpose
permits such things as I am to live. I used
to find a diabolical amusement in making her innocent
heart shudder to hear me blaspheme; to see
the tears come into her forgiving eyes, as I vociferated
drinking; an assertion as false as it was blasphemous,
for often and often have I bellowed with unmanly
fears, when the fullness of my head and other
symptoms, awaked the apprehension of apoplexy.
I consider it one of my last duties to do full justice
to this extraordinary woman, at the expense of
heaping tenfold curses on my own head. I
deserve them. It was my customary amusement
to exert every means, to resort to every species of
provocation, by way of experiment to see if it was
possible to overcome her. I found fault with her
domestic economy; reproached her with not
keeping her children decent; with being a slut
in her own person, though she was neatness itself;
with being ugly, disagreeable, stupid, tiresome,
a millstone about my neck, the bane of my life,
and the cause of all my misery. And then I would
conclude by cursing her; yes, reader, cursing her,
the wife of my bosom, the mother of my children.
Yet she bore it all, and what was for a long while
inexplicable to me, bore it without losing that
vivacity of temper, and flow of spirits which marked
her happier days. Nay, her gaiety seemed
wilder than ever, and to increase with my brutality.
It was long before I discovered the reason. But
I will not anticipate. Let not the reader suppose
that even I, degraded and brutalized as I was, had
not my intervals of shame and suffering during all
this time. I sometimes, as if by enchantment,
Sometimes in the middle of the night, my punishment
would come upon me. The embodied representatives
of my guilt and crimes, would throng
round my bed, and make me gnash my teeth, and
roar in agony. At these times my resource was
to get up, light a candle, and set down to the bottle,
till the fumes of the poison again produced
insensibility to every rational feeling or perception.
Then would I defy Heaven, brag of my
utter fearlessness of the present or the future, and
play the reckless bully once more, while my
heart was quaking to its core with guilty apprehensions.
It is scarcely to be supposed, that this mode of
life, accompanied as it was by a total neglect of
my farm, and a complete disregard to pecuniary
affairs, should not in no long time produce the usual
consequences. I indulged in the most foolish,
wanton extravagances; purchased on credit, for
I seldom had money, every thing I wanted, and
every thing I did not want, of those who would
trust me; abused them when they called for payment;
defied them when they threatened to put
me in jail; and when some of my neighbours
bailed me out at the entreaties of my wife, took a
trip out of the state in the proper time, and quietly
left them responsible for the money. Even
when she followed me with our children to prison,
Amelia seemed in more than usual high spirits,
was beyond the rough discipline of merited retribution.
I had arrived at that stage of brutal depravity,
in which every new disgrace furnishes
only a new incentive to wickedness; and every
stroke of the lash, only drives a man to run his race
of infamy with swifter foot. The more I became
satisfied that my case was past all cure, the worse
I became; the more I suffered, the more determined
I was to deserve my sufferings. Such is
the perverseness of sin!
If there ever was a lost, hopelessly, irretrievably
lost being in this world, it was myself. I was
dunned for money I could not pay. I was shunned
by my neighbours; my servants left me, as one it
was a disgrace to serve; and even the sots of the
neighbourhood disdained to drink with me, because,
as they said, “a gentleman ought to be
ashamed to make a beast of himself.” Though I
literally lived without food, I had become a bloated
mass of physical inanition. My hands shook; my
face was swelled and livid; my eyes exhibited the
red, fiery rings that mark the victim of the bowl;
and my legs were so swelled at times, as to prevent
my walking, except with crutches. Then my mental
tortures! But they are past all description.
The reader will think this was bad enough. But as
yet, he has seen nothing. The tragedy is yet to be
exhibited.
My attention, during my temporary confinements
than usual, towards Amelia, who had
borne with me throughout, with patience, nay indulgence,
beyond all example. She acquiesced
in all my unreasonable, nay, cruel requirements;
she indulged me in every thing; she bore in meek
resignation, all the refinements of vexation, the
mad pranks of tyranny, my wayward, perverted,
unmanly spirit, heaped upon her day and night.
During the whole progress of this complicated oppression,
it seemed to me that her powers of endurance
and submission increased with the severity
of my inflictions, and that the more I endeavoured
to wrong and distract her, the brighter
was the sparkling of her eyes, the more light and
buoyant her vivacity. To see her light step, and
hear her rattle away in the full effervescence of
sprightly vivacity, one would have supposed she was
the happiest of wives, and I the best of husband's.
But there is a certain state of endurance; a
forced elevation of the spirits which cannot be sustained
beyond its stated period, without shaking
the intellectual fabric to its foundation. The perpetual
tax upon the mind for high unnatural exertion,
sooner or later, will beggar it at last, or
drive it into excesses of some kind or other. It was
so with my poor Amelia, who now at times, even
to my blunted perceptions exhibited occasionally
eccentricities, that brutified as I was, made me
shudder. Her mind was sometimes evidently not
when she was strongly excited, so misplaced
and ungovernable, as to indicate too evidently
that the springs which regulated the fine
machine, were deranged, or worn out by intense
and perpetual exertion. I was too far gone now
to rally, or retrace the path upwards; but I did
pause, as this sad, and maddening truth flashed upon
my mind at last. I would, if I could, have tried to
be myself; to have been kind to her again, and if
possible, to have soothed her into her former state
of innocent and natural vivacity. But it was only
liquor that gave me a diabolical energy in wickedness,
and when free from its influence, I was altogether
incapable of exertion. I tried the experiment,
and its failure only sunk me deeper into
despair and perdition. I could not retrace the
past, or undo its fatal consequences; but I could
still produce a temporary indistinctness of perception,
which though not amounting to total
forgetfulness, was still something to a wretch like
me. The effort therefore, like all efforts made too
late, only made me the more determined to persevere
in the work of destruction, and accelerated
the consummation that always awaits a career like
mine.
My little children—I can mourn over them now,
for I am compelled to be sober, and shall never
be permitted to see them again. My poor children
were beginning to feel the effects of that
on their mother. They ran wild about
the house and in the fields, ragged and filthy. They
were old enough to see the degradation of one
parent, and the inconsistencies of the other. At
times, I encouraged them in all the wild, wayward
caprices of undisciplined youth; taught them to
blaspheme, like myself, and forced them to drink
with me till they reeled about the room. At
others, when the capricious fiend that ruled my actions,
forced me into another species of excess, I
would punish them in the most cruel manner, for
the very faults I had previously forced them to
commit, while my poor Amelia would dance about
the room, and laugh, till the tears came into her
eyes.
Will any body believe me? Yet it is true. I
now took a malignant pleasure in tempting my
wife to share with me in those excesses which had
blasted my soul, and destroyed her reason, in a
great degree. The innate delicacy of her sex,
and the barriers of a refined education, had hitherto
preserved her from that influence which is so
often exercised by the husband over the wife, the
wife over the husband, in cases similar to mine.
Strange as it is, still experience proves its truth,
those very examples which one might suppose,
would become only the more disgusting by a repetition
of their excesses, do actually in time reconcile
us to their enormity. Use lessens the
reconciliation, at length induces a compromise
with vice, fraught with imminent danger to the innocent.
To acquire a habit of forgiving crimes, is
too often to make advances towards them ourselves.
It is necessary to the security of virtue,
that we should abhor vice. My own experience
has taught me this.
Yet from the bottom of my soul, I believe my
poor Amelia, had she been herself, notwithstanding
her mistaken lenity, and mischievous indulgence
of my excesses, would never, in her rational
moments, have degraded herself by a participation
in my orgies. At last however, and by imperceptible
degrees, she fell from her high estate, and
sunk—not indeed to my dead level of measureless
brutality—but low enough to lose herself, and all
she once had been. I will not describe the scenes
which my home now presented, almost every day.
Husband, wife, father, mother, children, all mad;
now singing and laughing; now cursing and swearing
like the inmates of a mad-house. But I will
not particularize. Enough has been displayed, I
hope, to disgust and deter, whosoever shall read
my story, before he has become as lost as I am.
Let me hasten to the catastrophe, that my moral
may be complete.
From the period that my diabolical plot began
to succeed, my poor Amelia, who had hitherto
acquiesced, as I have more than once premised, in
symptoms of opposition. Shaken in her
steady intellect, and stimulated by artificial excitement,
she became obstinate, contentious, and
occasionally keenly sarcastic in her reproaches.
Accustomed as I had been to unresisting obedience,
these strange novelties threw me sometimes
almost into a phrenzy. Alas! why is it that obstinate,
irreclaimable drunkards, are not treated as
madmen, and shut up where they have neither the
power of gratifying their taste, or the opportunity
to commit crimes? Surely, if there be such a
thing as madness in the world, it is exhibited by the
malignant sot, with his passions stimulated into
phrenzy by draughts of liquid fire. Such a one is
not only mad, but wilfully mad, not by the visitation
of heaven, but his own deliberate acts. Yet the
innocent, afflicted being, is confined, starved, and
manacled, while the wretch who becomes the assassin
of his own soul, is left at large, to disgrace
his country, his nature, and his God, by wallowing
from day to day, in beastliness and sin.
One day—it was an ominous day—the anniversary
of our marriage—in a fit of savage hilarity,
I swore I would celebrate it with more than usual
splendour. I got up at twelve the preceding night,
and intoxicated myself before sunrise, when I went
to bed and slept myself partly sober again before
dinner. At dinner I drank, and enticed my poor
Amelia to follow my example, till the little reason
a toast—“Our wedding day—and many happy returns
of it.” A sudden pang seemed to cross her
mind, and produce a train of bitter recollections.
“Was it not a happy day, Amelia,” said I tauntingly.
She burst into tears, and covered her face with
her hands for a minute; then slowly removing
them, she replied with a look of agony, that still
haunts me day and night,—“Yes, it was a happy
day—but—.” The tone and look irritated my
already infuriated spirit, burning as it was in liquid
flames. “But what”—replied I—“Come,
speak out—let us have no secrets on this happy
day.” “We have paid dearly for it”—she said
—“You with the loss of fortune, fame, and goodness—I
with a broken heart, and a shattered reason.”
“And I alone am to blame for all this, I suppose?”
“No; I blame nothing but my own folly. I
had my warnings, but they came too late, or rather
as my conscience tells me, I shut my ears to
them. Would I had died,” added she, wringing
her hands, “before that miserable day.”
I laughed aloud. “Poor soul,” cried I, “does
it mean to say I deceived it. Pish, woman! did
you ever flatter yourself your weak and silly sex
was a match for men—men of the world—men of
experience. Pshaw! a wife is a mere plaything—
a—”
“A victim,” sighed my poor wife. “But what
can you charge me with?”
“Your fortune is gone,” said I.
“Who was it wasted it for me?”
“Your beauty is turned to deformity; you have
grown as ugly as the—.”
“Who spoiled it by robbing me of rest by night,
of happiness by day?”
“You are no longer the gay, sprightly, animated,
witty thing that won my heart.”
“Your heart,” replied she, scornfully; “but
who was it that robbed me of my gaiety; that
worried my sickened soul by night and day; that
has broken my heart, and turned my brain? Do
you know the man, the monster I would say?”
Her eyes now flashed fire as she continued, “Do
you know the monster, I say? he who deceived my
youth; wasted my fortune; destroyed my happiness;
degraded the modesty of my sex and station;
poured liquid fires down my throat and heaped
coals of fire on the heads of my children? who
rendered the past a recollection of horror, the present
yet worse—the future—O my God!”
“I, whom you promised to love and obey all
your life. Come, give me an example of obedience,”
cried I, pouring out a glass of filthy liquor,
“come, one bumper more; I swear you shall
drink one bumper more to this happy day—come!”
“I will not; I am already more than half a
beast!”
“And half a fool,” muttered I, rising and staggering
to the other side of the table, where she
was sitting, “I swear by h-ll, you shall drink it.”
“I swear by Heaven I will not!”
Who shall answer for the actions of a man, mad
with drink! Not himself, for he is a beast without
a soul; not his Maker, for he has abandoned
him. A struggle now ensued, during which I gradually
became irritated into fury. The children
clung affrighted about us, but I kicked them away.
My poor Amelia at length struck the glass out of
my hand; I became furious as a demon, and threw
her from me with a diabolical force, against the
corner of the fire-place. She fell, raised herself
half up, gave her children one look and me another,
and sunk down again. She was dead.
I am now the sober tenant of a mad-house.
The jury that tried me, would not believe a man
who acted such scenes as were proved upon me,
could be in his senses. They acquitted me on the
score of insanity. My relatives placed me here
to pass the rest of my days, and recover my senses
if I can. But I am not mad; the justice of heaven
has ordained that I shall live while I live, in
the full perception of my past wickedness. I
know not what is become of my children, for no
one will answer my inquiries—no one will tell me
where they are, or whether they are dead or alive.
All I can understand is, that I shall never see
them more. My constant companion day and night,
moment of my life is spent in recalling to my
mind, the history of that ill fated girl, and in summing
up what I have to answer for to her, her
friends and her offspring. Denied the indulgence
of all sorts of stimulants, my strength is gone; my
body shrunk and shrivelled almost to a skeleton,
and my limbs quake with the least exertion.
Guilt grins me in the face; infamy barks at my
heels; scorn points her finger at me; disease is
gnawing at my vitals; death already touches me
with his icy fingers; and eternity waits to swallow
me up. I am going to meet Amelia!
The man to whose charge I am committed, has
furnished me with the means of fulfilling this my
last task, and making the only atonement in my
power, for what I have done. If there be any one
who shall read this, to whom temptation may
beckon afar off, at a distance which disguises its
deformity, let him contemplate me as I entered on
the stage of life; as I pursued my career forward;
as I closed, or am about to close it for ever. Let
him not cheat his soul; let him not for a moment
believe, that it is impossible for him to become as
bad, nay, worse than I have been. If we look
only at the beginning and the end of a career of infamy
and wickedness, the space appears a gulf
which the delinquent has overleapt at a single
bound. But if we examine into the particulars of
his life and progress, we shall seldom fail to find
attained, step by step, by little and little, from
good to bad, from bad to worse. The pride of
human reason, may whisper in our ears that we can
never become like the wretch whose career we
have just been tracing. But as poor Ophelia
says, “We know what we are, but we know not
what we may be.” It is only to begin as I began;
to sow the same seeds, and be sure that in good
time you will reap the same fruits; drink the same
gall and bitterness here, the same fiery draught
hereafter.
| Tales of the good woman | |