Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously. In
Whenever I have not had you, Agnes, to advise and approve in the beginning, I have seemed to go wild, and to get into all sorts of difficulty. When I have come to you, at last (as I have always done), I have come to peace and happiness. I come home, now, like a tired traveller, and find such a blessed sense of rest! I
Cunning, ferocity, and drunkenness in all its stages, were there, in their strongest aspects; and women: some with the last lingering tinge of their early freshness, almost fading as you looked: others with every mark and stamp of their sex utterly beaten out, and presenting but one loathsome blank of profligacy and crime: some mere girls, others but young women, and none past the prime of life: formed the darkest and saddest portion of this dreary picture.
Husbands, too,bore the loss of their wives with the most heroic calmness. Wives,again, put on weeds for their husbands, as if, so far from grievingin the garb of sorrow, they had made up their minds to render it asbecoming and attractive as possible. It was observable, too, thatladies and gentlemen who were in passions of anguish during theceremony of interment, recovered almost as soon as they reachedhome, and became quite composed before the tea-drinking was over.