Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
My wife has been reduced very low of late. She brought me a boy a few weeks
past, a dead one though.
These circumstances give me neither pain nor pleasure. I am too much
engrossed by my divinity to take an interest in any thing else. True, I have lately
suered myself to be somewhat engaged here and there by a few jovial lads who
assist me in dispelling the anxious thoughts which my perplexed situation excites.
I must, however, seek some means to relieve Eliza’s distress. My nances are low;
but the last fraction shall be expended in her service, if she need it.
Julia Granby is expected at Mrs. Wharton’s every hour. I fear that her
inquisitorial eye will soon detect our intrigue and obstruct its continuation. Now,
there’s a girl, Charles, I should never attempt to seduce; yet she is a most alluring
object, I assure you. But the dignity of her manners forbids all assaults upon
her virtue. Why, the very expression of her eye blasts in the bud every thought
derogatory to her honor, and tells you plainly that the rst insinuation of the kind
would be punished with eternal banishment and displeasure. Of her there is no
danger. But I can write no more, except that I am, &c.,
PETER SANFORD.
Letter LXVIII
TO MRS. M. WHARTON.
TUESDAY.
My honored and dear mamma: In what words, in what language shall I address
you? What shall I say on a subject which deprives me of the power of expression?
Would to God I had been totally deprived of that power before so fatal a subject
required its exertion. Repentance comes too late, when it cannot prevent the evil
lamented: for your kindness, your more than maternal aection towards me, from
my infancy to the present moment, a long life of lial duty and unerring rectitude
could hardly compensate. How greatly decient in gratitude must I appear, then,
while I confess that precept and example, counsel and advice, instruction and
admonition, have been all lost upon me!
Your kind endeavors to promote my happiness have been repaid by the
inexcusable folly of sacricing it. The various emotions of shame and remorse,
penitence and regret, which torture and distract my guilty breast, exceed description.
Yes, madam, your Eliza has fallen, fallen indeed. She has become the victim of her
own indiscretion, and of the intrigue and artice of a designing libertine, who is
the husband of another. She is polluted, and no more worthy of her parentage. She
ies from you, not to conceal her guilt, (that she humbly and penitently owns,) but
to avoid what she has never experienced, and feels herself unable to support—a
mother’s frown; to escape the heart-rending sight of a parent’s grief, occasioned by
the crimes of her guilty child.
I have become a reproach and disgrace to my friends. The consciousness of
having forfeited their favor and incurred their disapprobation and resentment
induces me to conceal from them the place of my retirement; but lest your
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