"At sixteen, I suddenly grew tall, and something like comeliness
appeared on a Sunday, when I had time to wash my face, and put on clean
clothes. My master had once or twice caught hold of me in the passage;
but I instinctively avoided his disgusting caresses. One day however,
when the family were at a methodist meeting, he contrived to be alone in
the house with me, and by blows--yes; blows and menaces, compelled me to
submit to his ferocious desire; and, to avoid my mistress's fury, I was
obliged in future to comply, and skulk to my loft at his command, in
spite of increasing loathing.

"The anguish which was now pent up in my bosom, seemed to open a new
world to me: I began to extend my thoughts beyond myself, and grieve for
human misery, till I discovered, with horror--ah! what horror!--that I
was with child. I know not why I felt a mixed sensation of despair and
tenderness, excepting that, ever called a bastard, a bastard appeared to
me an object of the greatest compassion in creation.

"I communicated this dreadful circumstance to my master, who was almost
equally alarmed at the intelligence; for he feared his wife, and public
censure at the meeting. After some weeks of deliberation had elapsed, I
in continual fear that my altered shape would be noticed, my master
gave me a medicine in a phial, which he desired me to take, telling me,
without any circumlocution, for what purpose it was designed. I burst
into tears, I thought it was killing myself--yet was such a self as
I worth preserving? He cursed me for a fool, and left me to my own
reflections. I could not resolve to take this infernal potion; but I
wrapped it up in an old gown, and hid it in a corner of my box.

"Nobody yet suspected me, because they had been accustomed to view me as