ABSTRACT
No sooner had I acquiesced in the arrangements for that event which was to seal my destiny, than a confused feeling of regret came upon me. An oppression stole upon my spirits. The sounds of flattery and protestation I heard like a drowsy murmur, reaching the ear without impressing the mind; and the gay forms of my companions flitted before me like their fellow moths in the sun-beam, which the eye pursues, but not the thoughts. Yet I had not resolution to quit the scene, which had lost its charms for me. To think of meeting my father’s eye; or being left to meditate alone in a home which I was so soon to desert; of seeing the objects which had been familiar to my childhood wear the dreary aspect of that which we look upon perhaps for the last time, might have appalled one far better enured than I to dare the assaults of pain. But at last even the haunts of dissipation were forsaken by the throng, and I had no choice but to go.
