She,
did not _tell_ me to lie, or to swindle, or to stab--no! oh, no! she
would have told me that all these things were bad; but she _taught_ me
to perform them all. She roused my passions, and not my _principles_,
into activity. She provoked the one, and suppressed the other. Did my
father reprove my improprieties, she petted me, and denounced him. She
crossed his better purposes, and defeated all his designs, until, at
last, she made my passions too strong for my government, not less than
hers; and left me, knowing the true, yet the victim of the false. Thus
it was that, while my intellect, in its calmer hours, taught me that
virtue is the only source of true felicity, my ungovernable passions set
the otherwise sovereign reason at defiance, and trampled it under foot.
Yes, in that last hour of eternal retribution, if called upon to
denounce or to accuse, I can point but to one as the author of all--the
weakly-fond, misjudging, misguiding woman who gave me birth!
"Within the last hour I have been thinking over all these things.
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