Page:Honest debtor, or, The virtuous man struggling with, rising superior to, and overcoming misfortune (2).pdf/10

 to be the happiest I had ever experienced proved to me the most fatal. It deprived me of both the mother and child. This stroke plunged me into abyss of sorrow. I will not tell you how heart-breaking it was. None but those whose experience such sorrows can imagine what they are.

“I was still in the height of my ffliaction, when my wife's father sent his notary with the information, accompanied with a few words of slight condolence, that the writings were drawn up to transfer back into his band the fortune I had received from him. Indignant at this indecent precipitation, I answered that I was quite prepared; and the next day the fortune was returned. But the jewels that I had given his daughter, and the other articles of value for her own particular use, became also his property He had a legal right to them. I represented the inhumanty of requiring me, after eighteen months marriage, to submit to so severe a law; but he insisted upon his right with all the impatience of a greedy claimant. I submitted; and this severe exaction made some noise in the world. Then did the envy my happiness had excited, hasten to punish me for my short-lived felicity, and, under the disguise of pity, took great care to defulge my ruin, which it seemed to