hter of J---- D----,
Esq. of *******, Connecticut, in the eighteenth year of her age."

The paper fell from the palsied hand--a sudden faintness came upon
him--the room grew dark--he staggered, and fell senseless upon the
floor.

* * * * *

The incidents of our story will here produce a pause.----The fanciful
part of our readers may cast it aside in chagrin and disappointment.
"Such an event," may they say, "we were not prepared to expect.--After
so many, and such various trials of heart; after innumerable
difficulties surmounted; almost invincible objects overcome, and
insuperable barriers removed--after attending the hero and heroine of
your tale through the diversified scenes of anxiety, suspense, hope,
disappointment, expectation, joy, sorrow, anticipated bliss, sudden and
disastrous woe----after elevating them to the threshold of happiness,
by the premature death of one, to plunge the other, instantaneously, in
deep and irretrievable despair, must not, cannot be right.--Your story
will hereafter become languid and spiritless; the subject will be
uninteresting, the theme unengaging, since the _genius_ which animated
and enlivened it is gone for ever."

Reader of sensibility, stop. Are we not detailing facts? Shall we gloss
them over with false colouring? Shall we describe things as they are, or
as they are not? Shall we draw with the pencil of nature, or of art? Do
we indeed paint life as it is, or as it is not? Cast thine eyes, reader,
over the ephemeral circle of passing and fortuitous events; view the
change of contingencies; mark well the varied and shifting scenery in
the great drama of time;--seriously contemplate nature in her
operations; minutely examine the entrance, the action, and the exit of
characters on the stage of existence--then say, if disappointment,
distress, misery and calamitous woe, are not the inalienable portion of
the susceptible bosom. Say, if the possession of refined feeling is
enviable----the lot of _Nature's children_ covetable--whether to such,
through life, the sprinklings of comfort are sufficient to give a zest
to the bitter banquets of adversity--whether, indeed, sorrow, sighing,
and tears, are not the inseparable attendants of all those whose hearts
are the repositories of tender affections and pathetic sympathies.

But what says the moralist?--"Portray life as it is. Delude not the
senses by deceptive appearances. Arouse your hero? call to his