The power of sympathy: or, The triumph of nature. Founded in truth.

Chapter 37: LETTER XXXIV.

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About This Book

An epistolary novel recounts a series of letters that expose a courtship and a concealed seduction whose revelation brings shame, illness, and familial ruin, used to dramatize the moral dangers of reckless passion. Through careful narration and moral commentary, the correspondence traces how social conventions, personal weakness, and misplaced sympathy produce personal and domestic catastrophe while urging prudence, female self-respect, and the restorative force of nature and truth. Written in a sentimental, didactic mode, the work blends realistic social observation with moral exhortation and is structured to instruct readers about the consequences of seduction and the virtues of restraint.

LETTER XXXIV.

Harrington to Worthy.

Boston.

I FIND my temper grown extremely irritable—my sensibility is wounded at the slightest neglect—I am very tenacious of everything, and of everybody.

A PARTY was made yesterday to go on the water; I was omitted, and the neglect hurt me. I inquired the cause, and what think you is the answer? “I am no company—I am asked a question and return nothing to the point—I am absent—I am strangely altered within a few days—I am thinking of a different subject when I ought to be employed in conversation—I am extravagant in my observations—I am no company.”

THEY would persuade me I am little better than a mad man—I have no patience with their nonsensical replies—Such wiseacres do not deserve my pity.

Farewel!