Martin Faber :: :: University of Virginia Library

“This is a fearful precipice, but I dare
look upon it. What, indeed, may I not
dare—what have I not dared! I look before
me, and the prospect, to most men full
of terrors, has few or none for me. Without
adopting too greatly the spirit of cant
which makes it a familiar phrase in the
mouths of the many, death to me will prove
a release from many strifes and terrors. I do
not fear death. I look behind me, and though
I may regret my crimes, they give me no

compunctious apprehensions. They were
among the occurrences known to, and a necessary
sequence in the progress of time and
the world's circumstance. They might have
been committed by another as well as by myself.
They must have been committed! I
was but an instrument in the hands of a power
with which I could not contend.

Yet, what a prospect, does this backward
glance afford! How full of colors and characters—How
variously dark and bright. I
am dazzled and confounded at the various
phases of my own life. I wonder at the prodigious
strides which my own feet have taken
—and as I live and must die, I am bold to declare,—in
half the number of instances, without
my own consciousness. Should I be considered
the criminal, in deeds so committed?

Had not my arm been impelled—had not my
mood been prompted by powers and an agency
apart from my own, I had not struck the
blow. The demon was not of me, though
presiding over, and prevailing within, me. Let
those who may think, when the blood is boiling
in their temples, analyze its throbs and the
source of its impulses. I cannot. I am a
fatalist. Enough for me that it was written!

My name is Martin Faber. I am of good
family—of German extraction—the only son.
I was born in M— village, and my parents
were recognized as among the first in
respectability and fortune of the place. The
village was small—numbering some sixty families;
and with a naturally strong and shrewd,
and a somewhat improved mind, my father,
Nicholas Faber, became the first man in it.

The village of M—, was one of those that
always keep stationary. The prospect was
slight, therefore, of our family declining in influence.
My father, on the contrary, grew
every day stronger in the estimation of the
people. He was their oracle—their counsellor
—his word was law, and there were no rival
pretensions set up in opposition to his supremacy.
Would this had been less the case!
Had Nicholas Faber been more his own, than
the creature of others, Martin, his son, had
not now obliterated all the good impressions
of his family, and been called upon, not only
to recount his disgrace and crime, but to pay
its penalties. Had he bestowed more of his
time in the regulation of his household, and
less upon public affairs, the numberless vicious
propensities, strikingly marked in me

from childhood up, had, most probably been
sufficiently restrained. But why speak of
this? As I have already said—it was written!

The only child, I was necessarily a favorite.
The pet of mama, the prodigy of papa,
I was schooled to dogmatize and do as I
pleased from my earlier infancy. I grew
apace, but in compliance with maternal tenderness,
which dreaded the too soon exposure
of her child's nerves, health and sensibilities, I
was withheld from school for sometime after
other children are usually put in charge of a
tutor. When sent, the case was not very
greatly amended. I learned nothing, or what
I learned was entirely obliterated by the nature
of my education and treatment at home.
I cared little to learn, and my tutor dared not
coerce me. His name was Michael Andrews.

He was a poor, miserable hireling, who having
a large and depending family, dared not offend
by the chastisement of the favorite son of a
person of so much consequence as my father.
Whatever I said or did, therefore, went by
without notice, and with the most perfect impunity.
I was a truant, and exulted in my
irregularities, without the fear or prospect of
punishment. I was brutal and boorish—savage
and licentious. To inferiors I was wantonly
cruel. In my connexion with superiors,
I was cunning and hypocritical. If, wanting
in physical strength, I dared not break ground
and go to blows with my opponent, I, nevertheless,
yielded not, except in appearance. I
waited for my time, and seldom permitted the
opportunity to escape, in which I could revenge
myself with tenfold interest, for provocation

or injustice. Nor did I discriminate between
those to whom this conduct was exhibited. To
all alike, I carried the same countenance. To
the servant, the schoolmaster, the citizen, and
even to my parents, I was rude and insolent.
My defiance was ready for them all, and when,
as sometimes, even at the most early stages
of childhood, I passed beyond those bounds of
toleration, assigned to my conduct, tacitly, as it
were, by my father and mother, my only rebuke
was in some such miserably unmeaning language
as this—`Now, my dear—now Martin
—how can you be so bad'—or, `I will be
vexed with you, Martin, if you go on so.'

What was such a rebuke to an overgrown
boy, to whom continued and most unvarying
deference, on all hands, had given the most
extravagant idea of his own importance. I

bade defiance to threats—I laughed at and
scorned reproaches. I ridiculed the soothings
and the entreaties of my mother; and her gifts
and toys and favors, furnished in order to tempt
me to the habits which she had not the courage
to compel, were only received as things
of course, which it was her duty to give me.
My father, whose natural good sense, sometimes
made him turn an eye of misgiving upon
my practices, wanted the stern sense of
duty which would probably have brought
about a different habit; and when, as was occasionally
the case, his words were harsh and
his look austere, I went, muttering curses,
from his presence, and howling back my defiance
for his threats. I was thus brought up
without a sense of propriety—without a feeling
of fear. I had no respect for authority—

no regard for morals. I was a brute from education,
and whether nature did or not, contribute
to the moral constitution of the creature
which I now appear, certain, I am, that the
course of tutorship which I received from all
around me, would have made me so. You
will argue from this against my notion of the
destinies, since I admit, impliedly, that a different
course of education, would have brought
about different results. I think not. The
case is still the same. I was fated to be so
tutored.