No self-convicted criminal ever approached her angry and just judge with
greater awe, nor with a truer contrition, than I do you by these lines.
Indeed I must say, that if the latter of my humble prayer had not
respected my future welfare, I had not dared to take this liberty. But
my heart is set upon it, as upon a thing next to God Almighty's
forgiveness necessary for me.
Had my happy sister known my distresses, she would not have wrung my
heart, as she has done, by a severity, which I must needs think unkind
and unsisterly.
But complaint of any unkindness from her belongs not to me: yet, as she
is pleased to write that it must be seen that my penitence is less owing
to disappointment than to true conviction, permit me, Madam, to insist
upon it, that, if such a plea can be allowed me, I an actually entitled
to the blessing I sue for; since my humble prayer is founded upon a true
and unfeigned repentance: and this you will the readier believe, if the
creature who never, to the best of her remembrance, told her mamma a
wilful falsehood may be credited, when she declares, as she does, in the
most solemn manner, that she met the seducer with a determination not to
go off with him: that the rash step was owing more to compulsion than to
infatuation: and that her heart was so little in it, that she repented
and grieved from the moment she found herself in his power; and for every
moment after, for several weeks before she had any cause from him to
apprehend the usage she met with.
Wherefore, on my knees, my ever-honoured Mamma, (for on my knees I write
this letter,) I do most humbly beg your blessing: say but, in so many
words, (I ask you not, Madam, to call me your daughter,)--Lost, unhappy
wretch, I forgive you! and may God bless you!--This is all! Let me, on
a blessed scrap of paper, but see one sentence to this effect, under your
dear hand, that I may hold it to my heart in my most trying struggles,
and I shall think it a passport to Heaven. And, if I do not too much
presume, and it were WE instead of I, and both your honoured names
subjoined to it, I should then have nothing more to wish. Then would I
say, 'Great and merciful God! thou seest here in this paper thy poor
unworthy creature absolved by her justly-offended parents: Oh! join, for
my Redeemer's sake, thy all-gracious fiat, and receive a repentant sinner
to the arms of thy mercy!'
I can conjure you, Madam, by no subject of motherly tenderness, that will
not, in the opinion of my severe censurers, (before whom this humble
address must appear,) add to reproach: let me therefore, for God's sake,
prevail upon you to pronounce me blest and forgiven, since you will
thereby sprinkle comfort through the last hours of
Your
CLARISSA HARLOWE.