University of Virginia Library

LETTER XXII.
HARRIOT to MYRA.

How frail is the heart! How dim
is human foresight! We behold the gilded
bait of temptation, and know not until taught
by experience, that the admission of one errour
is but the introduction of calamity.
One mistake imperceptibly leads to another
—but the consequences of the whole bursting
suddenly on the devoted head of an unfortunate
wanderer, becomes intolerable.

How acute must be that torture, which seeks
an asylum in suicide! O seduction! how
many and how miserable are the victims of
thy unrelenting vengeance. Some crimes,
indeed, ceafe to afflict when they ceafe to
exist, but SEDUCTION opens the door to a
dismal train of innumerable miseries.

YOU can better imagine the situation of
the friends of the unfortunate Ophelia than
I can describe it.

THE writings she left were expressive of
contrition for her past transaction, and an
awful sense of the deed she was about to execute.
Her miserable life was insupportable,
there was no oblation but in death—she
welcomed death, therefore, as the pleasing
harbinger of relief to the unfortunate. She

remembered her once loved seducer with
pity, and bequeathed him her forgiveness—
To say she felt no agitation was not just, but
that she experienced a calmness unknown
to a criminal was certain. She hoped the
rashness of her conduct would not be construed
to her disadvantage—for she died in
charity with the world. She felt like a poor
wanderer about to return to a tender parent,
and flattered herself with the hopes of a welcome,
though unbidden to return. She
owned the way was dark and intricate, but
lamented she had no friend to enlighten her
understanding, or unravel the mysteries of
futurity. She knew there was a God who
will reward and punish: She acknowledged
she had offended him, and confessed her
repentance. She expatiated on the miserable
life she had suffered, not that she feared
detection, that was impossible; but that she
had been doing an injury to a sister who was
all kindness to her; she prayed her sister's
forgiveness—even as she herself forgave her
seducer; and that her crime might not be
called ingratitude, because she was always
sensible of her obligation to that sister. She
requested her parents to pardon her, and acknowledged
she felt the pangs of a bleeding
heart at the shock which must be given to
the most feeling of mothers. She intreated
her sisters to think of her with pity, and died
with assurance that her friends would so far
revere her memory as to take up one thing
or another, and say this belonged to poor
Ophelia

O MY friend! what scenes of anguish
are here unfolded to the survivours. The
unhappy Shepherd charged Martin with the
seduction and murder of his daughter.
What the termination of this most horrible
affair will be, is not easy to foresee.

Adieu!