intercept rather than to aid or connive at my flight. Fly I must; whither,
it is pretty certain, will never come to your knowledge. Farewell."

My brother's disappearance, the immediate ruin of my father, whose
whole fortune was absorbed by debts contracted in his name, and for the
most part without his knowledge, the sudden affluence of the adventurer
who had suggested his projects to my brother, were the immediate
consequences of this event. To a man of my father's habits and views, no
calamity can be conceived greater than this. Never did I witness a more
sincere grief, a more thorough despair. Every thing he once possessed was
taken away from him and sold. My mother, however, prevented all the most
opprobrious effects of poverty, and all in my power to alleviate his
solitude, and console him in his distress, was done.

Would you have thought, after this simple relation, that there was any
room for malice and detraction to build up their inventions?

My brother was enraged that I refused to comply with any of his
demands; not grateful for the instances in which I did comply. Clarges
resented the disappointment of his scheme as much as if honour and
integrity had given him a title to success.

How many times has the story been told, and with what variety of
exaggeration, that the sister refused to lend her brother money, when she
had plenty at command, and when a seasonable loan would have prevented the
ruin of her family, while, at the same time, she had such an appetite for
toys and baubles, that ere yet she was eighteen years old she ran in debt
to Clarges the jeweller for upwards of five hundred dollars'-worth!

You are the only person to whom I have thought myself bound to tell the