her reasons. My mind is enervated and feeble,
like my body. I cannot look upon the sufferings of those I love without
exquisite pain. I cannot steel my heart by the force of reason, and by
submission to necessity; and, therefore, too frequently employ the
cowardly expedient of endeavouring to forget what I cannot remember
without agony.

I told you that my father was sober and industrious by habit; but habit
is not uniform. There were intervals when his plodding and tame spirit
gave place to the malice and fury of a demon. Liquors were not sought by
him; but he could not withstand entreaty, and a potion that produced no
effect upon others changed him into a maniac.

I told you that I had a sister, whom the arts of a villain destroyed.
Alas! the work of her destruction was left unfinished by him. The blows
and contumelies of a misjudging and implacable parent, who scrupled not
to thrust her, with her new-born infant, out of doors; the curses and
taunts of unnatural brothers, left her no alternative but death.----But
I must not think of this; I must not think of the wrongs which my mother
endured in the person of her only and darling daughter.

My brothers were the copyists of the father, whom they resembled in
temper and person. My mother doted on her own image in her daughter and
in me. This daughter was ravished from her by self-violence, and her
other children by disease. I only remained to appropriate her affections
and fulfil her hopes. This alone had furnished a sufficient reason why I
should be careful of my health and my life, but my father's character
supplied me with a motive infinitely more cogent.

It is almost incredible, but nevertheless true, that the only being
whose presence and remonstrances had any influence on my father, at
moments when his reason was extinct, was myself. As to my personal
strength, it was nothing; yet my mother's person was rescued from
brutal violence; he was checked, in the midst of his ferocious career,
by a single look or exclamation from me. The fear of my rebukes had even
some influence in enabling him to resist temptation. If I entered the
tavern at the moment when he was lifting the glass to his lips, I never
weighed the injunctions of decorum, but, snatching the vessel from his
hand, I threw it on the ground. I was not deterred by the presence of
others; and their censures on my want of filial respect and duty were
listened to with unconcern. I chose not to justify myself