_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
soothe resentment, or to supplicate for mercy. It seeks not a favourable
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