LETTER XLIV.
To Henry Colden.
I said I would not write to you again; I would encourage,
I would allow of no intercourse between us. This
was my solemn resolution and my voluntary and no less
solemn promise, yet I sit down to abjure this vow, to break
this promise.
What a wretch am I! Feeble and selfish beyond all example
among women; Why, why was I born, or why received
I breath in a world and at a period, with whose inhabitants
I can have no sympathy, whose notions of rectitude
and decency find no answering chord in my heart?
Never was creature so bereft of all dignity; all steadfastness.
The slave of every impulse; blown about by the
predominant gale; a scene of eternal fluctuation.
Yesterday my mother pleaded. Her tears dropped fast
into my bosom, and I vowed to be all she wished; not
merely to discard you from my presence, but to banish even
your image from my thoughts. To act agreeably to her
wishes was not sufficient. I must feel as she would have
me feel. My actions must flow, not merely from a sense
of duty, but from fervent inclination.
I promised every thing. My whole soul was in the promise.
I retired to pen a last letter to you, and to say something
to your father. My heart was firm; my hand steady.
My mother read and approved.—Dearest Jane! Now,
indeed, are you my child. After this I will not doubt your
constancy. Make me happy, by finding happiness in this
resolution.
O, thought I, as I paced my chamber alone, what an ample
recompense for every self-denial, for every sacrifice,
are thy smiles, my maternal friend. I will live smilingly
for thy sake, while thou livest. I will live only to close thy
eyes, and then, as every earthly good has been sacrificed at
thy bidding, will I take the pillow that sustained thee when
dead, and quickly breathe out upon it my last sigh.
My thoughts were all lightsome and serene. I had laid
down, methought, no life, no joy but my own. My mother's
peace, and your peace, for the safety of either of whom I
would cheerfully die, had been purchased by the same act.
How did I delight to view you restored to your father's
house. I was still your friend, though invisible. I watched
over you, in quality of guardian angel. I etherealized
myself from all corporeal passions. I even set spiritual
ministers to work to find one worthy of succeeding me, in
the sacred task of making you happy. I was determined
to raise you to affluence, by employing, in a way unseen
and unsuspected by you, those superfluities which a blind
and erring destiny had heaped upon me.
And whither have these visions flown? Am I once more
sunk to a level with my former self? Once I thought that
religion was a substance with me; not a shadow, to flit, to
mock, and to vanish when its succor was most needed; yet
now does my heart sink.
O comfort me, my friend! plead against yourself;
against me. Be my mother's advocate. Fly away from these
arms that clasp you, and escape from me, even if your flight
be my death. Think not of me but of my mother, and secure
to her the consolation of following my unwedded corse
to the grave, by disclaiming, by hating, by forgetting the unfortunate
