I am the miserablest man living. Give me counsel, dear Editor. I was
bred up in the strictest principles of honesty, and have passed my life
in punctual adherence to them. Integrity might be said to be ingrained
in our family. Yet I live in constant fear of one day coming to the
gallows.
Till the latter end of last autumn, I never experienced these feelings
of self-mistrust, which ever since have embittered my existence. From
the apprehension of that unfortunate man[E] whose story began to make so
great an impression upon the public about that time, I date my horrors.
I never can get it out of my head that I shall some time or other commit
a forgery, or do some equally vile thing. To make matters worse, I am in
a banking-house. I sit surrounded with a cluster of bank-notes. These
were formerly no more to me than meat to a butcher's dog. They are now
as toads and aspics. I feel all day like one situated amidst gins and
pitfalls. Sovereigns, which I once took such pleasure in counting out,
and scraping up with my little tin shovel, (at which I was the most
expert in the banking-house,) now scald my hands. When I go to sign my
name, I set down that of another person, or write my own in a
counterfeit character. I am beset with temptations without motive. I
want no more wealth than I possess. A more contented being than myself,
as to money-matters, exists not. What should I fear?
When a child, I was once let loose, by favor of a nobleman's gardener,
into his Lordship's magnificent fruit-garden, with full leave to pull
the currants and the gooseberries; only I was interdicted from touching
the wall-fruit. Indeed, at that season (it was the end of autumn) there
was little left. Only on the south wall (can I forget the hot feel of
the brick-work?) lingered the one last peach. Now peaches are a fruit
which I always had, and still have, an almost utter aversion to. There
is something to my palate singularly harsh and repulsive in the flavor
of them. I know not by what demon of contradiction inspired, but I was
haunted with an irresistible desire to pluck it. Tear myself as often as
I would from the spot, I found myself still recurring to it, till,
maddening with desire, (desire I cannot call it,) with wilfulness
rather,--without appetite, (against appetite, I may call it,) in an evil
hour I reached out my hand, and plucked it. Some few rain-drops just
then fell; the sky, from a bright day, became overcast; and I was a type
of our first parents, after eating of that fatal fruit. I felt myself
naked and ashamed, stripped of my virtue, spiritless. The downy fruit,
whose sight rather than savor had tempted me, dropped from my hand,
never to be tasted. All the commentators in the world cannot persuade me
but that the Hebrew word, in the second chapter of Genesis, translated
apple, should be rendered peach. Only this way can I reconcile that
mysterious story.
Just such a child at thirty am I among the cash and valuables, longing
to pluck, without an idea of enjoyment further. I cannot reason myself
out of these fears: I dare not laugh at them. I was tenderly and
lovingly brought up. What then? Who that in life's entrance had seen the
babe F----, from the lap stretching out his little fond mouth to catch
the maternal kiss, could have predicted, or as much as imagined, that
life's very different exit? The sight of my own fingers torments me,
they seem so admirably constructed for--pilfering. Then that jugular
vein, which I have in common----; in an emphatic sense may I say with
David, I am "fearfully made." All my mirth is poisoned by these unhappy
suggestions. If, to dissipate reflection, I hum a tune, it changes to
the "Lamentations of a Sinner." My very dreams are tainted. I awake with
a shocking feeling of my hand in some pocket.
Advise me, dear Editor, on this painful heart-malady. Tell me, do you
feel anything allied to it in yourself? Do you never feel an itching, as
it were,--a _dactylomania_,--or am I alone? You have my honest
confession. My next may appear from Bow Street.