LETTER III.
To Edgar Huntly.
After the fatigues of the day, I returned home. As I
entered, my wife was breaking the seal of a letter, but, on
seeing me, she forbore, and presented the letter to me.
I saw, said she, by the superscription of this letter, who
the writer was. So agreeably to your wishes, I proceeded
to open it, but you have come just time enough to save me
the trouble.
This letter was from you. It contained information relative
to Clithero. See how imminent a chance it was that
saved my wife from a knowledge of its contents. It required
all my efforts to hide my perturbation from her, and
excuse myself from showing her the letter.
I know better than you the character of Clithero, and
the consequences of a meeting between him and my wife.
You may be sure that I would exert myself to prevent a
meeting.
The method for me to pursue was extremely obvious.
Clithero is a madman, whose liberty is dangerous, and who
requires to be fettered and imprisoned as the most atrocious
criminal.
I hastened to the chief magistrate, who is my friend, and
by proper representations, obtained from him authority to
seize Clithero wherever I should meet with him, and effectually
debar him from the perpetration of new mischiefs.
New York does not afford a place of confinement for
lunatics, as suitable to his case as Pennsylvania. I was
desirous of placing him as far as possible from the place of
my wife's residence. Fortunately there was a packet for
Philadelphia, on the point of setting out on her voyage.
This vessel I engaged to wait a day or two, for the purpose
of conveying him to Pennsylvania hospital. Meanwhile,
proper persons were stationed at Powles-hook, and at the
quays where the various stageboats from Jersey arrive.
These precautions were effectual. Not many hours after
the receipt of your intelligence, this unfortunate man applied
for a passage at Elizabethtown, was seized the moment he
set his foot on shore, and was forthwith conveyed to the
packet, which immediately set sail.
I designed that all these proceedings should be concealed
from the women, but unfortunately neglected to take suitable
measures for hindering the letter, which you gave me reason
to expect on the ensuing day, from coming into their hands.
It was delivered to my wife in my absence, and opened immediately
by her.
You know what is, at present, her personal condition.
You know what strong reasons I had to prevent any danger
or alarm from approaching her. Terror could not assume
a shape more ghastly than this. The effects have been what
might have been easily predicted. Her own life has been
imminently endangered, and an untimely birth has blasted
my fondest hope. Her infant, with whose future existence
so many pleasures were entwined, is dead.
I assure you, Edgar, my philosophy has not found itself
lightsome and active under this burden. I find it hard to
forbear commenting on your rashness in no very mild terms.
You acted in direct opposition to my counsel, and to the
plainest dictates of propriety. Be more circumspect and
more obsequious for the future.
You knew the liberty that would be taken of opening my
letters; you knew of my absence from home, during the
greatest part of the day, and the likelihood, therefore, that
your letters would fall into my wife's hands before they
came into mine. These considerations should have prompted
you to send them under cover to Whitworth or Harvey, with
directions to give them immediately to me.
Some of these events happened in my absence, for I determined
to accompany the packet myself, and see the madman
safely delivered to the care of the hospital.
I will not torture your sensibility by recounting the incidents
of his arrest and detention. You will imagine that
his strong, but perverted reason exclaimed loudly against
the injustice of his treatment. It was easy for him to out-reason
his antagonist, and nothing but force could subdue
his opposition. On me devolved the province of his jailor
and his tyrant; a province which required a heart more
steeled by spectacles of suffering and the exercise of cruelty
than mine had been.
Scarcely had we passed The Narrows, when the lunatic,
being suffered to walk the deck, as no apprehensions were
entertained of his escape in such circumstances, threw
himself overboard, with a seeming intention to gain the
shore. The boat was immediately manned, the fugitive
was pursued, but at the moment, when his flight was overtaken,
he forced himself beneath the surface, and was seen
no more.
With the life of this wretch, let our regrets and our forebodings
terminate. He has saved himself from evils, for
which no time would have provided a remedy, from lingering
for years in the noisome dungeon of a hospital. Having
no reason to continue my voyage, I put myself on board a
coasting sloop, and regained this city in a few hours. I
persuade myself that my wife's indisposition will be temporary.
It was impossible to hide from her the death of Clithero,
and its circumstances. May this be the last arrow
in the quiver of adversity! Farewell.
