Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 2.djvu/255

 choly retrospection on my, numerous acts of vice and folly.

"How many. warnings," said I, "how many lessons am I to receive before I shall reform? How narrowly have | escaped being sent to my account 'unanealed' and unprepared! What must have been my situation if I had at this moment been called into the presence of my offended Creator? This poor girl is pure and innocent, compared with me, taking into consideration the advantages of education on my side, and the want of it on hers. What has produced all this misery and the dreadful consequences which might have ensued, but my folly in trifling with the feelings of an innocent girl, and winning her affections merely to gratify my own vanity; at the same time that I have formed a connexion with this unhappy creature, the breaking of which will never cause me one hour's regret, while it will leave her in misery, and will, in all probability, embitter all her future existence? What shall I do?