l live in the
heart of her faithful Lucy, whose experience of her numerous virtues and
engaging qualities has imprinted her image too deeply on the memory to
be obliterated. However she may have erred, her sincere repentance is
sufficient to restore her to charity.

Your letter gave me the first information of this awful event. I had
taken a short excursion into the country, where I had not seen the
papers, or, if I had, paid little or no attention to them. By your
directions I found the distressing narrative of her exit. The poignancy
of my grief, and the unavailing lamentations which the intelligence
excited, need no delineation. To scenes of this nature you have been
habituated in the mansion of sorrow where you reside.

How sincerely I sympathize with the bereaved parent of the dear,
deceased Eliza, I can feel, but have not power to express. Let it be her
consolation that her child is at rest. The resolution which carried this
deluded wanderer thus far from her friends, and supported her through
her various trials, is astonishing. Happy would it have been had she
exerted an equal degree of fortitude in repelling the first attacks upon
her virtue. But she is no more, and Heaven forbid that I should accuse
or reproach her.

Yet in what language shall I express my abhorrence of the monster whose
detestable arts have blasted one of the fairest flowers in creation? I
leave him to God and his own conscience. Already is he exposed in his
true colors. Vengeance already begins to overtake him. His sordid mind
must now suffer the deprivation of those sensual gratifications beyond
which he is incapable of enjoyment.

Upon your reflecting and steady mind, my dear Julia, I need not
inculcate the lessons which may be drawn from this woe-fraught tale; but
for the sake of my sex in general, I wish it engraved upon every heart,
that virtue alone, independent of the trappings of wealth, the parade of
equipage, and the adulation of gallantry, can secure lasting felicity.
From the melancholy story of Eliza Wharton let the American fair learn
to reject with disdain every insinuation derogatory to their true
dignity and honor. Let them despise and forever banish the man who can
glory in the seduction of innocence and the ruin of reputation. To
associate is to approve; to approve is to be betrayed.

I am, &c.,

LUCY SUMNER.

LETTER LXXIV.

TO MRS. M. WHARTON.

BOSTON.

Dear madam: We have paid the last tribute of respect t