I write to you, my dear George, lest my silence should make you
uneasy; yet what have I to say that will not have the same effect?
Things do not go well with me, and my spirits seem forever flown. I
was a month on my passage, and the weather was so tempestuous we
were several times in imminent danger. I did not expect ever to
have reached land. If it had pleased Heaven to have called me
hence, what a world of care I should have missed! I have lost all
relish for pleasure, and life seems a burden almost too heavy to be
endured. My head is stupid, and my heart sick and exhausted. But
why should I worry you? and yet, if I do not tell you my vexations,
what can I write about?

Your father and mother are tolerably well, and inquire most
affectionately concerning you. They do not suspect that you have
left Lisbon, and I do not intend informing them of it till you are
provided for. I am very unhappy on their account, for though I am
determined they shall share my last shilling, yet I have every
reason to apprehend extreme distress, and of course they must be
involved in it. The school dwindles to nothing, and we shall soon
lose our last boarder, Mrs. Disney. She and the girls quarrelled
while I was away, which contributed to make the house very
disagreeable. Her sons are to be whole boarders at Mrs. Cockburn's.
Let me turn my eyes on which side I will, I can only anticipate
misery. Are such prospects as these likely to heal an almost broken
heart? The loss of Fanny was sufficient of itself to have thrown a
cloud over my brightest days; what effect, then, must it have when
I am bereft of every other comfort? I have, too, many debts. I
cannot think of remaining any longer in this house, the rent is so
enormous; and where to go, without money or friends, who can point
out? My eyes are very bad and my memory gone. I am not fit for any
situation; and as for Eliza, I don't know what will become of her.
My constitution is impaired. I hope I shan't live long, yet I may
be a tedious time dying.

Well, I am too impatient. The will of heaven be done! I will labor
to be resigned. "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." I
scarce know what I write, yet my writing at all when my mind is so
disturbed is a proof to you that I can never be lost so entirely in