ked with admiring eyes.

"I needed not, therefore, the social deprivations I experienced in India
to prepare me to enter with eager zest into the excitement and pleasures
of Parisian life, to which, through the kindness of Mr. Clinton, I
obtained, as it seems you are aware, a free and immediate introduction.

"It is true I was summoned thither at a time when my spirits had been
for months struggling with depression, caused by sad news from home, and
had not, therefore, the least disposition to avail myself of Mr.
Clinton's politeness; but the feebleness of his health, and his
inability to enjoy the gaieties of the place, compelled me to offer
myself as an escort to his daughter, who, fond of society, accepted my
services, thus drawing me into the very whirl and vortex of fashionable
life, in which I soon found much to flatter, bewilder, and intoxicate. I
could not be insensible to the privileges so unexpectedly accorded to
me, nor could my vanity be wholly proof against the assaults made upon
it. Nor was my manliness of character alone at stake. But the soundness
of principle and simplicity of habit implanted in me from childhood, and
hitherto preserved intact, soon found themselves at stake. I had
withstood every kind of gross temptation, but my new associates now
presented it to me in that subtle form which often proves a snare. The
wine-cup could never have enticed me to the disgusting scenes of drunken
revelry; but held in the hands of the polished gentlemen, who had, but a
moment before, been the recipients of popular favour and women's smiles,
it sparkled with a richer lustre, and its bitter dregs were forgotten.
The professed gamester would vainly have sought me for an accomplice;
but I was not equally on my guard against the danger which awaited me
from other unexpected quarters; for how could I believe that my friends,
Mr. Clinton's friends, the ornaments of the sphere in which they moved,
would unfairly win my money, and lead me to ruin? I wonder as I look
back upon my residence in Paris that I did not fall a victim to one of
the snares that were on every side spread for my destruction, and into
which my social disposition and unsophisticated nature rendered me prone
to fall. Nothing but the recollection of my pure-minded and watchful
mother, whose recent death had recalled to my mind her warning
counsels--deemed by me, at the time, unnecessary; but now, springing up
and arming themselves with a solemn meaning