LETTER LII.
To Mrs. Fielder.
Philadelphia, December 16.
It is not improbable that as soon as you recognise the
hand that wrote this letter, you will throw it unread into the
fire, yet it comes not to sooth resentment, or to supplicate
for mercy. It seeks not a favorable audience. It wishes
not, because the wish would be chimerical, to have its assertions
believed. It expects not even to be read. All I
hope is, that, though neglected, despised, and discredited
for the present, it may not be precipitately destroyed or
utterly forgotten. The time will come, when it will be read
with a different spirit.
You inform me, that Miss Jessup has denied her letter,
and imputes to me the wickedness of forging her name to a
false confession. You are justly astonished at the iniquity
and folly of what you deem my artifice. This astonishment,
when you look back upon my past misconduct, is turned
from me to yourself; from my folly to your own credulity,
that was, for a moment, made the dupe of my contrivances.
I can say nothing that will or that ought—that is my peculiar
misery;—that ought, considering the measure of my
real guilt, to screen me from this charge. There is but one
event that can shake your opinion. An event that is barely
possible; that may not happen, if it happen at all, till the
lapse of years; and from which, even if I were alive, I
could not hope to derive advantage. Miss Jessup's conscience
may awaken time enough to enable her to undeceive
you, and to repent of her
second, as well as her
first
fraud.
If that event ever takes place, perhaps this letter may
still exist to bear testimony to my rectitude. Thrown aside
and long forgotten, or never read, chance may put it in your
way, once more. Time, that soother of resentment as well
as lessener of love, and the perseverance of your daughter
in the way you prescribe, may soften your asperities even
towards me. A generous heart like yours, will feel an emotion
of joy that I have not been quite as guilty as you had
reason to believe.
Give me leave, Madam, to anticipate that moment. The
number of my consolations are few. Your enmity I rank
among my chief misfortunes, and the more so because I
deserve much, though not all your enmity. The persuasion
that the time will come, when you will acquit me of
this charge, is, even now, a comforter. This is more desirable
to me, since it will relieve your daughter from one
among the many evils, in which she has been involved by
the vices and infirmities of
