One thing more I have to request.  Plead for me with my two best friends, Mrs. Richman and Mrs. Sumner.  I ask you not to palliate my faults,—­that cannot be done,—­but to obtain, if possible, their forgiveness.  I cannot write all my full mind suggests on this subject.  You know the purport, and can better express it for me.

And now, my dear Julia, recommending myself again to your benevolence, to your charity, and (may I add?) to your affection, and entreating that the fatal consequences of my folly, now fallen upon my devoted head, may suffice for my punishment, let me conjure you to bury my crimes in the grave with me, and to preserve the remembrance of my former virtues, which engaged your love and confidence; more especially of that ardent esteem for you, which will glow till the last expiring breath of your despairing

ELIZA WHARTON.

LETTER LXX.

TO MR. CHARLES DEIGHTON.

HARTFORD.

I have, at last, accomplished the removal of my darling girl from a place where she thought every eye accused and every heart condemned her.

She has become quite romantic in her notions.  She would not permit me to accompany her, lest it should be reported that we had eloped together.  I provided amply for her future exigencies, and conveyed her by night to the distance of ten or twelve miles, where we met the stage, in which I had previously secured her a seat.  The agony of her grief at being thus obliged to leave her mother’s house baffles all description.

It very sensibly affected me, I know.  I was almost a penitent.  I am sure I acted like one, whether I were sincere or not.  She chose to go where she was totally unknown.  She would leave the stage, she said, before it reached Boston, and take passage in a more private carriage to Salem, or its vicinity, where she would fix her abode; chalking the initials of my name over the door, as a signal to me of her residence.

She is exceedingly depressed, and says she neither expects nor wishes to survive her lying in.  Insanity, for aught I know, must be my lot if she should die.  But I will not harbor the idea.  I hope, one time or other, to have the power to make her amends, even by marriage.  My wife may be provoked, I imagine, to sue for a divorce.  If she should, she would find no difficulty in obtaining it, and then I would take Eliza in her stead; though I confess that the idea of being thus connected with a woman whom I have been enabled to dishonor, would be rather hard to surmount.  It would hurt even my delicacy, little as you may think me to possess, to have a wife whom I know to be seducible.  And on this account I cannot be positive that even Eliza would retain my love.