than you have been, for
I threw away all the rich blessings of untroubled youth and health; I had
no excuse in my outward lot. But while I was at college that event in my
life occurred, which in the end brought on the state of mind I have
mentioned to you--the state of self-reproach and despair, which enables
me to understand to the full what you are suffering; and I tell you the
facts, because I want you to be assured that I am not uttering mere vague
words when I say that I have been raised from as low a depth of sin and
sorrow as that in which you feel yourself to be. At college I had an
attachment to a lovely girl of seventeen; she was very much below my own
station in life, and I never contemplated marrying her; but I induced her
to leave her father's house. I did not mean to forsake her when I left
college, and I quieted all scruples of conscience by promising myself
that I would always take care of poor Lucy. But on my return from a
vacation spent in travelling, I found that Lucy was gone--gone away with
a gentleman, her neighbours said. I was a good deal distressed, but I
tried to persuade myself that no harm would come to her. Soon afterwards
I had an illness which left my health delicate, and made all dissipation
distasteful to me. Life seemed very wearisome and empty, and I looked
with envy on every one who had some great and absorbing object--even on
my cousin who was preparing to go out as a missionary, and whom I had
been used to think a dismal, tedious person, because he was constantly
urging religious subjects upon me. We were living in London then; it was
three years since I had lost sight of Lucy; and one summer evening, about
nine o'clock, as I was walking along Gower Street, I saw a knot of people
on the causeway before me. As I came up to them, I heard one woman say,
"I tell you, she is dead." This awakened my interest, and I pushed my way
within the circle. The body of a woman, dressed in fine clothes, was
lying against a door-step. Her head was bent on one side, and the long
curls had fallen over her cheek. A tremor seized me when I saw the hair:
it was light chestnut--the colour of Lucy's. I knelt down and turned
aside the hair; it was Lucy--dead--with paint on her cheeks. I found out
afterwards that she had taken poison--that she was in the power of a
wicked woman--that the very clothes on her back were not her own. It was
then that my past life burst upon me in all its hideousness. I wished I
had