2o8 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



to a like communion, and a certain person, apparently to 

 gain prestige with the body, had expressed himself willing 

 to marry a converted negro girl, and had gone through the 

 ceremony of betrothal at Bluefields. But on his returning 

 to England no more had been heard of him, and Philip 

 Gosse was commissioned to remind him of his promise. 

 He did so immediately on his own arrival in London, and 

 received a flippant reply. To this he returned the follow- 

 ing answer : — 



" I have received your note of yesterday. I cannot 

 "say that it would give me any pleasure to see you, 

 " knowing as I do your behaviour to Sister Stevens. I 

 " desire to write in a humiliating sense of my own failure, 

 "yet in faithfulness I must say that the whole affair, 

 "the breaking of a solemn engagement, the coolness 

 " with which you could crush a sister's happiness, and 

 " above all the insincerity, I had almost said the duplicity, 

 "which has marked your whole course in it, renders any 

 "communion with you out of the question. I cannot 

 " help believing, with almost a moral certainty, that even 

 " when you recorded your betrothal before the Church at 

 " Bluefields, you had not even the slightest intention of 

 "returning to fulfil it. And when the tenor of your 

 " letters began to intrude painful suspicions on our 

 " minds, and Coleman and myself felt constrained to- 

 " wards you, your replies (at least that to me) insinu- 

 "ated that you were still unchanged in intention, and 

 "that your health was the only obstacle. But when 

 " I read (I cannot help adding with indignation) in your 

 "late letters to Sister S. your heartless breach of 

 "promise, a breach which would evoke the scorn of 

 " every worldly man of honourable feeling, and which 

 " in a court of law would be visited with heavy damages, 



