HOW acute must be that torture, which seeks an asylum in suicide! O SEDUCTION! how many and how miserable are the victims of thy unrelenting vengeance. Some crimes, indeed, cease to afflict when they cease to exist, but SEDUCTION opens the door to a dismal train of innumerable miseries.
YOU can better imagine the situation of the friends of the unfortunate Ophelia than I can describe it.
THE writings she left were expressive of contrition for her past transaction, and an awful sense of the deed she was about to execute. Her miserable life was insupportable, there was no oblation but in death—she welcomed death, therefore, as the pleasing harbinger of relief to the unfortunate. She remembered her once loved seducer with pity, and bequeathed him her forgiveness.—To say she felt no agitation was not just, but that she experienced a calmness unknown to a criminal was certain. She hoped the rashness of her conduct would not be construed to her disadvantage—for she died in charity with the world. She felt like a poor wanderer about to return to a tender parent, and flattered herself with the hopes of a welcome, though unbidden return. She owned the way was dark and intricate, but lamented she had no friend to enlighten her understanding, or unravel the mysteries of futurity. She knew there was a God who will reward and punish: She acknowledged she had offended Him, and confessed her repentance. She expatiated on the miserable life she had suffered: not that she feared detection, that was impossible: but that she had been doing an injury to a sister who was all kindness to her: she prayed her sister’s forgiveness—even as she herself forgave her seducer; and that her crime might not be called ingratitude, because she was always sensible of her obligation to that sister. She requested her parents to pardon her, and acknowledged she felt the pangs of a bleeding heart at the shock which must be given to the most feeling of mothers. She intreated her sisters to think of her with pity, and died with assurance that her friends would so far revere her memory as to take up one thing or another, and say this belonged to poor Ophelia.
O MY friend! what scenes of anguish are here unfolded to the survivours. The unhappy Shepherd charged Martin with the seduction and murder of his daughter. What the termination of this most horrible affair will be, is not easy to foresee.
Adieu!
LETTER XXIII.
Harriot to Myra.
Rhodeisland.
WHATEVER may be the other causes (if there were any besides her seduction) which drove the unhappy Ophelia, temerariously to end her existence, it certainly becomes us, my dear friend, to attend to them—and to draw such morals and lessons of instruction from each side of the question, as will be a mirrour by which we may regulate our conduct and amend our lives. A prudent pilot will shun those rocks upon which others have been dashed to pieces, and take example from the conduct of others less fortunate than himself: It is the duty of the moralist, then to deduce his observations from preceding facts in such a manner as may directly improve the mind and promote the economy of human life.
THIS may be an apology for sending you the arguments of Martin in answer to Shepherd, who in his rage and grief had called him the murderer of his child.