University of Virginia Library

JANE TO MATILDA.

Grenville is a blockhead. I have no patience with him.
There he sits, moping all night long, by the side of Juliet,
without opening his mouth; and only, now and then,
catching his breath, as the tune changes. What a pity
that so handsome a fellow should be such a fool. We
must manage our cards well, or he will never get her;
for she is prodigiously improved. Nay, aunt—it gives
me the headach, sometimes, to think on what we have
prepared for her. She looks so lovely;—so beautiful,—
so innocent; and then, her voice! I have heard it compared
to a bugle, over the water—but a bugle, a silver
bugle, is not so clear and sweet. It is more like a bell
ringing in the sky. Ah, my dear aunt, if that stupid
fellow would'nt sit by her, so; and look so sad and sorry
—just as if he had eaten too heartily of cold apple dumpling—she

might be a most enviable woman—spend
all
her life between tract societies, and prayer meetings, and
love feasts—the happiest creature!—ah, who can help
gaping?—“To suckle fools and chronicle small beer”
—kill spiders, darn rags, and whip children—O, there's
nothing so pleasant. Nothing “half so sweet in life”—
and then, if she should happen to lose one of her babes—
why, it is only giving her new bonnet to quiet her. I
have known it succeed, more than once, with bereaved
mothers! You see that I am in excellent spirits. You
think so, do you? Aunt, I could sit down and cry, with
a good stomach—this moment. I don't believe that I
shall live long. I have been reading a system of domestick
medicine;—don't laugh at me—and, at every page I
found myself afflicted with some new disorder. Well,
well—come on, come on, directly, as you have promised;
make Grenville hold up his head, and look like a man;—
and then—aunt,—my dear aunt, I have a fearful secret
to communicate to you. Do you not feel cold about the
heart! I do—but it is done. No eye to witness it—
none. It was tremendously dark. It thundered—and
—it was done. And such was the ferocious exaltation
of my spirit at the time, that I could have done the same
deed, though the day of judgment had been at hand. O,
aunt! I feel horribly about the forehead,—very hot and
scorching—and my skin peals off, lately, with the fever
of my spirit.

Indeed—I thought the earth did quake—and—and—
yes aunt, I did see, as plainly as I ever saw any thing in
this life, the broad paved-aisle, and the altar, that you
know I dreamt of;—they opened in the darkness—and
I saw smoke issuing from them; I heard musick; and then
I saw my mother too, as plainly as I see this hand—sitting
there, and looking at the poor little creature.—
Yet I did it. Yea—and I should have done it, upon the
very altar—though it shook, at the time, with the divinity.—Have
you any notion of the truth? No—you have
not—you cannot have. What? that the haughty Jane—
your pride, your idol—that she should come to——
O, no, it were easier to believe her a murderess.—Aunt,

come, come! to me. Some incurable malady is upon me, I
know not what it is;—but, if you disappoint me again, I
shall die. I am sure of it. Why did you not come before?
You might have saved—No, I cannot tell you
what.—But come;—in mercy, come. What have I
written? I know not; my brain is in a whirl---and I am
trying to read it—but I cannot. I begin to pity poor Juliet.--But
if I have told anything---you must not believe
it---I am in such spirits!---O, aunt, it is the pleasantest
thing in the world to feel so full of festivity—no, no,
it is a lie—it is not—it is frightful. What is the matter
with me? Perhaps you can tell by the writing.—Is it
not strangely disordered?