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Frid. Mo: Feb. 20.

What a melancholy, mortified, perplexed hour has my un=
=kind, unaccountable friend given me. I have scarcely
strength enough to lift the pen.

“I love; I am still loved; I still cherish the hope” you
say. How much power is yours! The pleasure you have
often given me attests that power. The pain you have now
given me no less cogently bears witness to it.

I cannot argue with you. I have said enough to convince
you that to cherish the passion; the hope you speak of would
[gap]honour me

She for whom my attachment was founded chiefly in generosity
proved fickle & capricious; who, even while all circumstances
smiled, was capable of indifference, & almost of antipathy, who
offered; who solicited me to absolve her from her ties; who eagerly
caught at a plea, that never would have weighed a feather
with one who loved, & harshly & without hearing or appeal ab=
jured me forever!

An interval of grief succeeded, but I was not so poor a
wretch as to bear forever a servitude so ignominious. No. The
Yoke was speedily shaken off, & every new reflection for the last
two years, has added new strength to my conviction that, at
the price of temporary sorrow, I have bought exemption from
the eternal misery to flow from the unions of minds unakin;
unpaired.

All this I have told you before: Yet you talk to me thus
[gap] cherishing the hope of future union: Of that constituting my
security from Your influence.

You don’t do well, my dear Eliza; indeed, you don’t. I will
not say, you sport with my feelings; but you wound them sorely
If what you impute to me, were true, I have alreaday forfeited
that honour which you conjure me to regard, for what have I
not already said to you? Have I not made you mistress of
my destiny. Made it optional with you to place me highest
in your regard? What temerity; what wickedness in me thus


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to act, if my feelings left ‸ me in any doubt of my ability to
(I will not say,) to requite, but to challenge; to retrun your
tenderness

I have no security, I tell you, against you. Thank Heaven
I have not. The bar to supreme happiness exists not with
me. If I am still lonely & forlorn; if no heart beats in Unison
with mine; if that good, which I deem the greatest under
Heaven, the Regards of an Angel, who will condescend to
assume the guardian Office, even before death, be still denied
me, it is not my fault, Eliza. ‘Tis nobody’s, my Sweet friend
Least of all is it yours, whose merits it is that I love, & whose
preferance is valuable to me, because you are so excellent.

Why, I wonder, does this imputation discompose me so much?
I feel that it would be of little moment from any lips but yours
But you, who possess facts that shew the true state of my heart
You, to whom my deportment & professions are, at least, inconsis=
tent with preferance of another; I can not bear this imputation
from you

Regulate your feelings with regard to me by as cold a
standard as you will. Construe as coldly as you please my
professions of esteem for you; but, if you value my peace, cease
to believe, & cease to ascribe to me, a greater love; a more
tender preferance for any other human being. Your power over
my destiny is boundless. Use that power as you please, but d[gap]
not wound me by denying you possess ‸ it, or by ascribing to another
a power greater than yours, for that, you know, is to queston
my veracity; my honour.



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But let me turn away to a new page. What is ‸ it alarms my
dear girl. What is it that shocks her delicacy?

But let me hasten to appease her tumults. Who & what has
told me that you prefer me to all humankind?

Alas! Would to Heaven it were in my power to tell you
Who & what; that such a declaration had ever passed your
lips.

No: No: No: Eliza. You have been sufficiently carefully to
maintain the sisterly relation. To make me know my place as
third or fourth brother: I have not forgotten with how much
solicitude I was classed even with the married man Romeyne
& the mercantile & plegmatic Phœnixes

The charge, you assign me, shall be faithfully performed. I
will point out whenever my friend violates the law of delicacy
She shall always know, when I see reason to blush for her
Now, there is no such reason, & I may safely pronounce, you
never will o’erstep the bounds of true delicacy.

But what a whimsical kind of transgression is this?
There would be guilt, in averring what you did not feel; in
avowing what you do feel there is truth & delicacy.

My Eliza is dearer to me than all my brothers & sisters
It ought to be so: for what is brotherhood, the mere physical
[gap], compared with the attachment founded on moral sympa=
[gap]ies! Heaven knows I am not indifferent to my family
but my supreme affection must necessarily be garnered up
in no brother’s or sister’s bosom.

Recurring to the passage in my note, you will find, the
wish that startled you, a general wish merely. Tis true
Eliza is preferred by me, but thou, only beloved friend, can
tell me how wide the field that must be crossed before
Eliza equally prefers
C. B. B.~

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