90 RISEN B V PERSE VERANCE. 



sister. Many times I put to myself the questions, "What 

 am I at ? Is not this wrong ? Why do I go ? " But still I 

 went. 



'The last parting came; and now came my just punish- 

 ment ! The time was known to everybody, and was irrevocably 

 fixed ; for I had to move with a regiment, and the embarkation 

 of a regiment is an epoch in a thinly-settled province. To 

 describe this parting would be too painful even at this distant 

 day, and with this frost of age upon my head. The kind and 

 virtuous father came forty miles to see me just as I was going 

 on board in the river. His looks and words I have never 

 forgotten. As the vessel descended, she passed the mouth of 

 that creek which I had so often entered with delight ; and 

 though England, and all that England contained, were before 

 me, I lost sight of this creek with an aching heart. 



' On what trifles turn the great events in the life of man ! 

 If I had received a cool letter from my intended wife ; if I 

 had only heard a rumour of anything from which fickleness 

 in her might have been inferred ; if I had found in her any, 

 even the smallest, abatement of affection; if she had but let 

 go any one of the hundred strings by which she held my heart : 

 if any one of these, never would the world have heard of me. 

 Young as I was ; able as I was as a soldier ; proud as I 

 was of the admiration and commendations of which I was 

 the object ; fond as I was, too, of the command which, at so 

 early an age, my rare conduct and great natural talents had 

 given me; sanguine as was my mind, and brilliant as were 

 my prospects : yet I had seen so much of the meannesses, 

 the unjust partialities, the insolent pomposity, the disgusting 

 dissipations of that way of Hfe, that I was weary of it : I 

 longed exchanging my fine-laced coat for the Yankee farmer's 



