"'While I amused myself with drawing, my aunt often read to me some rationally entertaining book, occasionally introducing religious reading and discourse, with a wisdom and moderation which increased the effect of both. Knowing my natural levity and wretched habits, she generally waited till the proposal came from myself. At first when I suggested it, it was to please her: at length I began to find a degree of pleasure in it myself.
"'You will say I have not quite lost my romance. A thought struck me, that the first use I made of my pencil should serve to perpetuate at least one of my offenses. You know I do not execute portraits badly. With a little aid from fancy, which I thought made it allowable to bring separate circumstances into one piece, I composed a picture. It consisted of a detached figure in the background of poor Stokes, seen through the grate of his prison on a bed of straw: and a group, composed of his wife in the act of expiring, Fanny bending over a wreath of roses, withered with the tears she was shedding, and myself in the horrors in which you saw me,
Spectatress of the mischief I had made.
"'Wherever I go, this picture shall always be my companion. It hangs in my closet. My dear friends,' added she, with a look of infinite sweetness, 'whenever I am tempted to contract a debt, or to give in to any act of vanity or dissipation which may lead to debt, if after having looked on this picture I can pursue the project, renounce me, cast me off forever!
"'You know Lady Jane's vein of humor. One day, as we were conversing together, I confessed that at the very time I was the object of general notice, and my gayety the theme of general envy, I had never known happiness. 'I do not wonder at it,' said she. 'Those who greedily pursue admiration, would be ashamed to sit down with so quiet a thing as happiness.' 'My dear Lady Jane,' said I, 'correct me, counsel me, instruct me: you have been too lenient, too forbearing.' 'Well,' said she, with a cheerful tone, 'as you appoint me your physician, as you disclose your case, and ask relief, I will give you a prescription, which, though the simplest thing in the world, will, I am certain, go a great way toward curing you. As you are barely six-and-twenty, your disease, I trust, is not inveterate. If you will be an obedient patient, I will answer for your recovery.'
"'I assured her of my willing adoption of any remedy she might prescribe, as I was certain she would consider my weakness, and adapt her treatment, not so much to what my case absolutely required as to what my strength was able to bear.
"'Well, then,' said she—'but pray observe I am no quack. I do not undertake to restore you instantaneously. Though my medicine will work surely, it will work slowly. You know,' added she, smiling, 'the success of all alteratives depends on the punctuality with which they are taken, and the constancy with which they are followed up. Mine must be taken two or three times a day, in small quantities at first, the dose to be enlarged as you are able to bear it. I can safely assert, with the advertising doctors, that it may be used full or fasting, in all weathers, and all seasons; but I can not add with them that it requires no confinement.'
"'I grew impatient, and begged she would come to the point.
"'Softly, Matilda,' said she, 'softly. I must first look into my receipt-book, for fear I should mistake any of my ingredients. This book,' said she, opening it, 'though written by no charlatan, contains a cure for all diseases. It exhibits not only general directions, but specified cases.' Turning over the leaves as she was speaking, she at length stopped, saying, 'here is your case, my dear, or rather your remedy.' She then read very deliberately: 'Commune with your own heart—and in your chamber—and be still.'
"'I now found her grand receipt-book was the Bible. I rose and embraced her. 'My dear aunt,' said I, 'do with me whatever you please. I will be all obedience. I pledge myself to take your alterative regularly, constantly. Do not spare me. Speak your whole mind.'