The confusion and derangement consequent on such an
afflicting bereavement as I have suffered have rendered it necessary for
me to devote the first moments of composure to looking about me, and to
collecting and arranging the fragments of the ruin which has spread such
desolation over all my earthly prospects.
"Oh! what a blow! I dare not yet give myself up to the full survey of its
desolating effects. Every day brings to my mind a thousand new and fond
connections with dear Lucretia, all now ruptured. I feel a dreadful void,
a heart-sickness, which time does not seem to heal but rather to
aggravate.
"You know the intensity of the attachment which existed between dear
Lucretia and me, never for a moment interrupted by the smallest cloud; an
attachment founded, I trust, in the purest love, and daily strengthening
by all the motives which the ties of nature and, more especially, of
religion, furnish.
"I found in dear Lucretia everything I could wish. Such ardor of
affection, so uniform, so unaffected, I never saw nor read of but in her.
My fear with regard to the measure of my affection toward her was not
that I might fail of 'loving her as my own flesh,' but that I should put
her in the place of Him who has said, 'Thou shalt have no other Gods but
me.
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