to be comforted. Let me do the dear child the justice to say that
the only effect which this conduct had upon her, was to increase
her anxieties to soothe the repulsive spirit which should have
offended her. Perhaps, to provoke this anxiety in one it loves, is
the chief desire of such a spirit. It loves to behold the persevering
devotion, which it yet perversely toils to discourage. It smiles
within, with a bitter triumph, as it contemplates its own power,
to impart the same sorrow which a similar perversity has already
made it feel.

But, without seeking further to analyze and account for such
a spirit, it is quite sufficient if I have described it. Perhaps,
there are other hearts equally froward and wayward with my own. I
know not if my story will amend--perhaps it may not even instruct
or inform them--I feel that no story, however truthful, could have
disarmed the humor of that particular mood of mind which shows
itself in the blindness of the heart under which it was my lot to
labor. I did not want knowledge of my own perversity. I knew--I
felt it--as clearly as if I had seen it written in characters of
light, on the walls of my chamber. But, until it had exhausted
itself and passed away by its own processes, no effort of mine could
have overcome or banished it. I stalked apart, under its influence,
a gloomy savage--scornful and sad--stern, yet suffering--denying
myself equally, in the perverse and wanton denial to which I
condemned all others.

Perhaps something of this temper is derived from the yearnings of
the mental nature. It may belong somewhat to the natural direction
of a mind having a decided tendency to imaginative pursuits. There
is a dim, vague, indefinite struggle, for ever going on in the nature