Page:Adventures of Rachel Cunningham.djvu/22

 one of the most wealthy and thitherto most respectable merchants of that county. In her illicit intimacy with that gentleman she so won him altogether to her purpose, so benumbed his reason by the magic of her lewd endearments, and so completely entwined his affections in the web of her amorous sorcery, that he became wholly regardless of his immediate interests, totally neglected all his general concerns, and gave himself entirely up to sensual indulgence in her unchaste society and lust-polluted embraces. Thus he sacrificed the happiness of his family by his own devotion to her, offended the feelings and forfeited the respect of his relatives, while, at the same time that his dereliction of moral prudence and self-respect excited the censure of his best friends on his conduct, it moved their pity for his weakness, to see him so unfortunately lost to every sense of manly feeling, as well as to that rectitude which should have preserved and supported his character still unblemished in its thitherto [sic] worthiness.

Many of his most intimate, and most esteemed by him, acquaintances presumed the liberty of exerting their friendly influence in unqualified admonitions, by reasoning with him upon the seriously threatening results, as well as the disgusting and highly reproachable impropriety of his blind attachment to a connection of such disgraceful tendency; pointed out to him, in the strongest terms of reprobation, the selfish fraudulency in the mere show of affection practised toward him by the very unworthy object upon whom he was most profusely lavishing his means, and in whose impure embraces he was devoting himself to, and wasting his time in debauchery, which must, if he still thus persisted in the continuance of that course of destructive profligacy with her, terminate in his inevitable ruin.—But he was inexorably deaf to every thing they advanced with the hope of reclaiming him, except to those expressions of their feelings that involved her name in obloquy and degrading epithets, which generally moved his anger to retort, and hurl the application back upon the parties uttering them.

Such imperious, such firmly established command had Rachel attained over his passions, his desires, and his rational faculties, that his every power of reason was subdued