LETTER XXVI.
To Mrs. Fielder.
Philadelphia, November 4.
I TREMBLE thus to approach my honoured
mother, once more, since I cannot bring into
her presence the heart that she wishes to find.
Instead of acknowledgment of faults, and penitence
suitable to their heinous nature, I must
bring with me a bosom free from self-reproach,
and a confidence which innocence only can
give, that I shall be sometime able to disprove
the charge brought against me.
Ah my mother! could such guilt as this ever
stain a heart, fashioned by your tenderest care!
did it never occur to you that possibly some
mistake might have misled the witness against
me!
The letter which you sent me is partly mine.
All that is honest and laudable is mine, but
that which confesses dishonour has been added
by another hand. By whom my hand writing
was counterfeited, and for what end, I know
not. I cannot name any one, who deserves to be
suspected.
I might proceed to explain the circumstances
attending the writing and the loss of this letter
so fatal to me: but I forbear to attempt to
justify myself by means which I know before
hand, will effect nothing; unless it be to aggravate,
in your eyes, my imaginary guilt.
If it were possible for you to suspend your
judgment: if the most open and earnest and
positive averments of my innocence could induce
you, not to reverse, but merely to postpone
your sentence, you would afford me unspeakable
happiness.
You tell me, that the loss of your present
bounty will be the consequence of my marriage.
My claims on you are long ago at an end. Indeed,
I never had any claims. Your treatment
of me has flowed from your unconstrained benevolence.
For what you have given: for the
tenderness which you continually bestowed on
me, you have received only disappointment and
affliction.
For all your favours, I seem to you ungrateful:
yet long after that conduct was known,
which, to you, proves my unworthiness, your
protection has continued, and you are so good
as to assure me that it shall not be withdrawn as
long as I have no protector but you.
Dear as my education has made the indulgences
of competence to me, I hope, I shall
relinquish them without a sigh. Had you done
nothing more than screen my infancy and youth
from hardship and poverty, than supplied the
mere needs of nature, my debt to you could never
be paid.
But how much more than this have you done
for me? you have given me, by your instructions
and example, an understanding and an
heart. You have taught me to value a fair
fame beyond every thing but the peace of virtue;
you have made me capable of a generous
affection for a benefactor equal to yourself; capable
of acting so as, at once, to
deserve, and
to
lose your esteem: and enabled me to relinquish
cheerfully those comforts and luxuries
which cannot be retained but at the price of my
integrity.
I look forward to poverty without dismay.
Perhaps I make light of its evils, because I
have never tried them. I am indeed a weak and
undiscerning creature. Yet nothing but experience
will correct my error, if it be an error.
So sanguine am I, that I even cherish the belief
that the privation of much of that ease
which I have hitherto enjoyed, will strengthen
my mind, and somewhat qualify me for enduring
those evils which I cannot expect always
to escape.
You know, my mother, that the loss of my
present provision, will not leave me destitute.
If it did, I know your generosity too well, to imagine
that you would withdraw from me all the
means of support.
Indeed my own fund, slender as it is, in comparison
with what your bounty supplies me, is
adequate to all my personal wants; I am sure it
would prove so on the trial. So that I part with
your gifts with less reluctance, though with no
diminution of my gratitude.
If I could bring to you, my faith unbroken,
and were allowed to present to you my friend,
I would instantly fly to your presence: but, that
is a felicity too great for my hope. The alternative,
however painful, must be adopted by
