connections dear to my heart. I should have been a good Christian, a
good citizen, a good friend, a good man. I should have relished my
condition, perhaps have been an honor to it, and after having passed a
life of happy obscurity, surrounded by my family, I should have died at
peace. Soon it may be forgotten, but while remembered it would have been
with tenderness and regret.

Instead of this--what a picture am I about to draw!--Alas! why should I
anticipate the miseries I have endured? The reader will have but too
much of the melancholy subject.