Jane Talbot
Copyright© 2024 by Charles Brockden Brown
Letter XLIV
To Henry Colden
Philadelphia, December 1.
I said I would not write to you again; I would encourage, I would allow of, no intercourse between us. This was my solemn resolution and my voluntary and no less solemn promise; yet I sit down to abjure this vow, to break this promise.
What a wretch am I! Feeble and selfish beyond all example among women! Why, why was I born, or why received I breath in a world and at a period, with whose inhabitants I can have no sympathy, whose notions of rectitude and decency find no answering chord in my heart?
Never was a creature so bereft of all dignity, all steadfastness. The slave of every impulse; blown about by the predominant gale; a scene of eternal fluctuation.
Yesterday my mother pleaded. Her tears dropped fast into my bosom, and I vowed to be all she wished; not merely to discard you from my presence, but to banish even your image from my thoughts. To act agreeably to her wishes was not sufficient. I must feel as she would have me feel. My actions must flow, not merely from a sense of duty, but from fervent inclination.
I promised every thing. My whole soul was in the promise. I retired to pen a last letter to you, and to say something to your father. My heart was firm; my hand steady. My mother read and approved:--”Dearest Jane! Now, indeed, are you my child. After this I will not doubt your constancy. Make me happy, by finding happiness in this resolution.”
“Oh,” thought I, as I paced my chamber alone, “what an ample recompense for every self-denial, for every sacrifice, are thy smiles, my maternal friend! I will live smilingly for thy sake, while thou livest. I will live only to close thy eyes, and then, as every earthly good has been sacrificed at thy bidding, will I take the pillow that sustained thee when dead, and quickly breathe out upon it my last sigh.”
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