_To Henry Colden_
Philadelphia, December 1.
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 a 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."
"Oh," 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 succour was
most needed; yet now does my heart sink.
Oh, 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 corpse
to the grave, by disclaiming, by hating, by forgetting, the
unfortunate