The loss of her babe
was the tender string; against other cruel remembrances she laboured
to steel her bosom; and even a ray of hope, in the midst of her
gloomy reveries, would sometimes gleam on the dark horizon of
futurity, while persuading herself that she ought to cease to hope,
since happiness was no where to be found.--But of her child,
debilitated by the grief with which its mother had been assailed
before it saw the light, she could not think without an impatient
struggle.
"I, alone, by my active tenderness, could have saved,"
she would exclaim, "from an early blight, this sweet blossom;
and, cherishing it, I should have had something still to love."
In proportion as other expectations were torn from her,
this tender one had been fondly clung to, and knit into her heart.
The books she had obtained, were soon devoured, by one who
had no other resource to escape from sorrow, and the feverish dreams
of ideal wretchedness or felicity, which equally weaken the
intoxicated sensibility. Writing was then the only alternative,
and she wrote some rhapsodies descriptive of the state of her mind;
but the events of her past life pressing on her, she resolved
circumstantially to relate them, with the sentiments that experience,
and more matured reason, would naturally suggest.
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