spirits? Why," continued I,
taking her small white hand, "why should you carry on the deception: why
sacrifice your health, and I may say your happiness--" What more I might
have said I know not, probably it might have been an offer of marriage,
but she cut me short.

"Why does everybody sacrifice their health, their happiness, their all,
but for ambition and the love of power? It is true, as long as this
little beauty lasts, I might be courted as a woman, but never should I
be worshipped as--I may say--a god.--No, no, there is something too
delightful in that adoration, something too pleasant in witnessing a
crowd of fools stare, and men of three times my age falling down and
kissing the hem of my garment. This is, indeed, adoration! the delight
arising from it is so great, that all other passions are crashed by it--
it absorbs all other feelings, and has closed my heart even against
love, Japhet. I could not, I would not debase myself, sink so low in my
own estimation, as to allow so paltry a passion to have dominion over
me; and, indeed, now that I am so wedded to stimulants, even if I were
no longer a prophetess, it never could."

"But is not intoxication one of the most debasing of all habits?"

"I grant you, in itself, but with me and in my situation it is
different. I fall to rise again, and higher. I cannot be what I am
without I stimulate--I cannot stimulate without stimulants, therefore it
is but a means to a great and glorious ambition."

I had more conversation with her before I left, but nothing appeared to
move her resolution, and I left her, lamenting, in the first place, that
she had abjured love, because, notwithstanding the orris root, which she
kept in her mouth to take away the smell of the spirits, I found myself
very much taken with such beauty of person, combined with so much vigour
of mind; and in the second, that one so young should carry on a system
of deceit and self-destruction. When I rose to go away she put five
guineas in my hand to enable me to purchase what she required. "Add to
this one small favour," said I, "Aramathea--allow me a kiss."

"A kiss," replied she, with scorn; "no, Japhet, look upon me, for it is
the last time you will behold my youth! look upon me as a sepulchre,
fair without but unsavoury and rottenness within. Let me do you a
greater kindness, let me awaken your dormant energies, and plant that
ambition in your soul, which may lead to all that is great and