* * * But there will come a day of reckoning, even if I should not
live to see it. I have at least, seen ------ shivered, who was one of my
assassins. When that man was doing his worst to uproot my whole family,
tree, branch, and blossoms--when, after taking my retainer, he went over
to them--when he was bringing desolation on my hearth, and destruction
on my household gods--did he think that, in less than three years,
a natural event--a severe domestic, but an expected and common
calamity--would lay his carcass in a cross-road, or stamp his name in
a Verdict of Lunacy! Did he (who in his sexagenary * * *) reflect or
consider what my feeling must have been, when wife, and child, and
sister, and name, and fame, and country, were to be my sacrifice on
his legal altar--and this at a moment when my health was declining,
my fortune embarrassed, and my mind had been shaken by many kinds of
disappointment--while I was yet young, and might have reformed what
might be wrong in my conduct, and retrieved what was perplexing in my
affairs! But he is in his grave, and * * * What a long letter I have
scribbled!"

(Here is a random string of poetical gems:)--


So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright;
For the sword out-wears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And Love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,