s I
wrote, that, for my soul, I could not forbear running into the miserable.

'Tis strange, very strange, that a man's conscience should be able to
force his fingers to write whether he will or not; and to run him into a
subject he more than once, at the very time, resolved not to think of.

Nor is it less strange, that (no new reason occurring) he should, in a
day or two more, so totally change his mind; have his mind, I should
rather say, so wholly illuminated by gay hopes and rising prospects, as
to be ashamed of what he had written.

For, on reperusal of a copy of my letter, which fell into my hands by
accident, in the hand-writing of my cousin Charlotte, who, unknown to me,
had transcribed it, I find it to be such a letter as an enemy would
rejoice to see.

This I know, that were I to have continued but one week more in the way
I was in when I wrote the latter part of it, I should have been confined,
and in straw, the next; for I now recollect, that all my distemper was
returning upon me with irresistible violence--and that in spite of
water-gruel and soup-meagre.

I own I am still excessively grieved at the disappointment this admirable
woman made it so much her whimsical choice to give me.

But, since it has thus fallen out; since she was determined to leave the
world; and since she actually ceases to be; ought I, who have such a
share of life and health in hand, to indulge gloomy reflections upon an
event that is passed; and being passed, cannot be recalled?--Have I not
had a specimen of what will be my case, if I do.

For, Belford, ('tis a folly to deny it,) I have been, to use an old word,
quite bestraught.

Why, why did my mother bring me up to bear no controul? Why was I so
enabled, as that to my very tutors it was a request that I should not
know what contradiction or disappointment was?--Ought she not to have
known what cruelty there was in her kindness?

What a punishment, to have my first very great disappointment touch my
intellect!--And intellects, once touched--but that I cannot bear to think
of--only thus far; the very repentance and amendment, wished me so
heartily by my kind and cross dear, have been invalidated and postponed,
and who knows for how long?--the amendment at least; can a madman be
capable of either?

Once touched, therefore, I must endeavour to banish those gloomy
reflections, which might otherwise have brought on the right turn of
mind: and this, to express myself in Lo