“Restore my wife—restore my child—I will receive her once more, as the first, best gift of Heaven; and her errors shall be blotted from the tablets of my memory. Let me conjure you, Sir, to be the friend of this unhappy woman; point out to her the path, of duly; and if you have any real affection for her, make the sacrifice of it to her honour, and future peace. As you deal by her, may Heaven, in justice, deal by you!
“I take this method of addressing you, in preference to that which a man of the World might think more consistent with my situation, under the present circumstances; but I feel, while I am writing it, that I am no coward, and that were human miseries to be extinguished only in blood, the last drop of mine should be spilt to save her from perdition.
“Your answer I shall most anxiously wait for at the Gloucester Coffee-house, Piccadilly, from the hour of twelve, every morning, till I receive it.
“I am, Sir,
“Your’s, &c.
“Frederick S———.”
“I waited two days at the Coffee-house without hearing from him. I impatiently counted every minute, and anticipated the transition from deep despondency to transcendant joy. I called for coffee, read, or seemed to read, the papers of the day; and my heart beat at the shadow of every object I saw approaching towards the house.
“It was near one on the third morning before I heard any tidings interesting to myself. A waiter then came forward, with a smile, and told me that a Gentleman enquired for me. Half breathless, I desired him to be admitted; my trembling limbs could scarcely support me as he entered, and I begged him to be seated. I asked him if he came from Captain Nesbitt? He answered in the affirmative, and I attempted to close the door; but he desired to admit his friend; and then informed me that he was the bearer of a writ against me, in the name of Captain James Nesbitt, to whom I stood indebted for the sum of two hundred pounds, for money lent me by him in the West-Indies.
“I knew full well that a gambling debt was not by law recoverable; but my heart recoiled at the idea of contesting it, and I determined immediately to extricate myself, however inconvenient. My stock of money was reduced to four hundred and seventy pounds. I paid out of it the debt and costs, which were no small augmentation. I hired a retired lodging, and resolved to wait as patiently as I could, the result of an event which had robbed me of every terrestrial joy. Here I lived many months, with sober, well-disposed people, but gained no intelligence of those for whose sake alone I still continued to drag on the load of heavy existence.
“I was one morning surprized by the entrance of an attorney, who produced me two bills; the one for a hundred and twenty pounds, which debt, he said, had been contracted by Mrs. S——— for board and lodging; the other, for twenty-five guineas for one quarter’s schooling and masters for my boy.