_Harriot_ to _Myra_.
_Rhodeisland._
HOW frail is the heart! How dim is human foresight! We behold
the gilded bait of temptation, and know not until taught by experience,
that the admission of one errour is but the introduction of calamity.
One mistake imperceptibly leads to another—but the consequences of the
whole bursting suddenly on the devoted head of an unfortunate wanderer,
becomes intolerable.
HOW acute must be that torture, which seeks an asylum in suicide! O
SEDUCTION! how many and how miserable are the victims of thy unrelenting
vengeance. Some crimes, indeed, cease to afflict when they cease to
exist, but SEDUCTION opens the door to a dismal train of innumerable
miseries.
YOU can better imagine the situation of the friends of the unfortunate
_Ophelia_ than I can describe it.
THE writings she left were expressive of contrition for her past
transaction, and an awful sense of the deed she was about to execute.
Her miserable life was insupportable, there was no oblation but in
death—she welcomed death, therefore, as the pleasing harbinger of relief
to the unfortunate. She remembered her once loved seducer with pity, and
bequeathed him her forgiveness.—To say she felt no agitation was not
just, but that she experienced a calmness unknown to a criminal was
certain. She hoped the rashness of her conduct would not be construed to
her disadvantage—for she died in charity with the world. She felt like a
poor wanderer about to return to a tender parent, and flattered herself
with the hopes of a welcome, though unbidden return. She owned the way
was dark and intricate, but lamented she had no friend to enlighten her
understanding, or unravel the mysteries of futurity. She knew there was
a God who will reward and punish: She acknowledged she had offended Him,
and confessed her repentance. She expatiated on the miserable life she
had _suffered_: not that she feared detection, that was impossible: but
that she had been doing an injury to a sister who was all kindness to
her: she prayed her sister’s forgiveness—even as she herself forgave her
seducer; and that her crime might not be called ingratitude, because she
was always sensible of her obligation to that sister. She requested her
parents to pardon her, and acknowledged she felt the pangs of a bleeding
heart at the shock which must be given to the most feeling of mothers.
She intreated her sisters to think of her with pity, and died with
assurance that her friends would so far revere her memory as to take up
one thing or another, and say this belonged to poor _Ophelia_.
O MY friend! what scenes of anguish are here unfolded to the survivours.
The unhappy _Shepherd_ charged _Martin_ with the seduction and murder of
his daughter. What the termination of this most horrible affair will be,
is not easy to foresee.
Adieu!