O my best, my only friend! Now indeed is my heart broken! It has
received a blow it never will recover. Think not of corresponding with
a wretch who now seems absolutely devoted. How can it be otherwise, if
a parent's curses have the weight I always attributed to them, and have
heard so many instances in confirmation of that weight!--Yes, my dear
Miss Howe, superadded to all my afflictions, I have the consequences
of a father's curse to struggle with! How shall I support this
reflection!--My past and my present situation so much authorizing my
apprehensions!
I have, at last, a letter from my unrelenting sister. Would to Heaven I
had not provoked it by my second letter to my aunt Hervey! It lay ready
for me, it seems. The thunder slept, till I awakened it. I enclose the
letter itself. Transcribe it I cannot. There is no bearing the thoughts
of it: for [shocking reflection!] the curse extends to the life beyond
this.
I am in the depth of vapourish despondency. I can only repeat--shun,
fly, correspond not with a wretch so devoted as