incompatible with my nature. My habits debarred me from country
occupations. My pride regarded as vile and ignominious drudgery any
employment which the town could afford. Meanwhile, my wants were as
urgent as ever, and my funds were exhausted.

"There are few, perhaps, whose external situation resembled mine, who
would have found in it any thing but incitements to industry and
invention. A thousand methods of subsistence, honest but laborious,
were at my command, but to these I entertained an irreconcilable
aversion. Ease and the respect attendant upon opulence I was willing to
purchase at the price of ever-wakeful suspicion and eternal remorse;
but, even at this price, the purchase was impossible.

"The desperateness of my condition became hourly more apparent. The
further I extended my view, the darker grew the clouds which hung over
futurity. Anguish and infamy appeared to be the inseparable conditions
of my existence. There was one mode of evading the evils that impended.
To free myself from self-upbraiding and to shun the persecutions of my
fortune was possible only by shaking off life itself.

"One evening, as I traversed the bank of the creek, these dismal
meditations were uncommonly intense. They at length terminated in a
resolution to throw myself into the stream. The first impulse was to
rush instantly to my death; but the remembrance of papers, lying at my
lodgings, which might unfold more than I desired to the curiosity of
survivors, induced me to postpone this catastrophe till the next
morning.

"My purpose being formed, I found my heart lightened of its usual
weight. By you it will be thought strange, but it is nevertheless true,