To my surprise and increased vexation, I found my worthy uncle

striving in every possible way, without actually declaring his

purpose, in opposing my efforts and prospects. It is true he did

not utter my name; but he had formed a complete ticket, in which

my name was not; and he was toiling with all the industry of a

thoroughgoing partisan in promoting its success. The cup which he

had commended to my lips was overrunning with the gall of bitterness.

Hostility to me seemed really to have been a sort of monomania

with him from the first. How else was this canton procedure to be

accounted for? how, even with this belief, could it be excused? His

conduct was certainly one of those mysteries of idiosyncracy upon

which the moral philosopher may speculate to doomsday without being

a jot the wiser.

If his desire was to baffle me, he was successful. I was defeated,

after a close struggle, by a meagre majority of seven votes in some

seventeen hundred; and the night after the election was declared,

he gave a ball in honor of the successful candidates, in which

his house was filled to overflowing. I passed the dwelling about

midnight. Music rang from the illuminated parlor. The merry dance

proceeded. All was life, gayety, and rich profusion. And Julia!

even then she might have been whirling in the capricious movements

of the dance with my happy rival--she as happy--unconscious of him

who glided like some angry spectre beneath her windows, and almost

within hearing of her thoughtless voice.

Such were my gloomy thoughts--such the dark and dismal subjects of

my lonely meditations. I did the poor girl wrong. That night she

neither sung nor danced; and when I saw her again, I was shocked at

the visible alteration for the worse which her appearance exhibited

She was now grown thin, almost to meagreness; her cheeks were very

wan, her lips whitened, and her beauty greatly faded in consequence

of her suffering health.

Yet, will it be believed that, in that interview, though such

was her obvious condition, my perverse spirit found the language

of complaint and suspicion more easy than that of devotion and

tenderness. I know that it would be easy, and feel that it would

be natural, to account for and to excuse this brutality, by a

reference to those provocations which I had received from her father. A

warm temper, ardent and glowing, it is very safe to imagine, must

reasonably become soured and perverse by bad treatment and continual

injury. But this for me was no excuse. Julia was a victim also of

the same treatment, and in far greater degree than myself, as she

was far less able to endure it. Mine, however, was the perverseness

of impetuous blood--unrestrained, unchecked--having a fearful

will, an impetuous energy, and, gradually, with success and power,

swelling to the assertion of its own unqualified dominion--the

despotism of the blind heart.




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