My steps involuntarily brought me back to my lodgings. Here am I again at my pen. Never were my spirits lower, my prospects more obscure, my hopes nearer to extinction.
I am afraid to allow you too near a view of my heart at this moment of despondency. My present feelings are new even to myself. They terrify me. I must not trust myself longer alone. I must shake off, or try to shake off, this excruciating, this direful melancholy. Heavy, heavy is my soul; comfortless and friendless my condition. Nothing is sweet but the prospect of oblivion.
But, again I say, these thoughts must not lead me. Dreadful and downward is the course to which they point. I must relinquish the pen. I must sally forth into the fields. Naked and bleak is the face of nature at this inclement season; but what of that? Dark and desolate will ever be my world--but I will not write another word.
So, my friend, I have returned from my walk with a mind more a stranger to tranquillity than when I sallied forth. On my table lay the letter, which, ere I seal this, I will enclose to you. Read it here.
Letter L
To Mr. Colden
December 11.
Hereafter I shall be astonished at nothing but that credulity which could give even momentary credit to your assertions.
Most fortunately, my belief lasted only till you left the house. Then my scruples, which slept for a moment, revived, and I determined to clear up my doubts by immediately calling on Miss Jessup.