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chance--what one event brought this evil thing to pass, bear with me
while I relate. Death approaches; and the shadow which foreruns him has
thrown a softening influence over my spirit. I long, in passing through
the dim valley, for the sympathy--I had nearly said for the pity--of
my fellow men. I would fain have them believe that I have been, in some
measure, the slave of circumstances beyond human control. I would wish
them to seek out for me, in the details I am about to give, some
little oasis of fatality amid a wilderness of error. I would have them
allow--what they cannot refrain from allowing--that, although temptation
may have erewhile existed as great, man was never thus, at least,
tempted before--certainly, never thus fell. And is it therefore that he
has never thus suffered? Have I not indeed been living in a dream? And
am I not now dying a victim to the horror and the mystery of the wildest
of all sublunary visions?
I am the descendant of a race whose imaginative and easily excitable
temperament has at all times rendered them remarkable; and, in my
earliest infancy, I gave evidence of having fully inherited the family
character. As I advanced in years it was more strongly developed;
becoming, for many reasons, a cause of serious disquietude to my
friends, and of positive injury to myself. I grew self-willed, addicted
to the wildest caprices, and a prey to the most ungovernable passions.
Weak-minded, and beset with constitutional infirmities akin to my own,
my parents could do but little to check the evil propensities which
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