Last night I was hushed to Sleep by the continuous elements and my eyes closed while vivid flashes of lightning and loud peals of thunder were seen and heard in regular succession. And the morning sun has found my mind much in the same condition this morning as I left the storm last night. Wilds of imagination fill fancy's airy region. Prospects wear much the same forlorn aspect. Fear Strikes the mind; Want sits perching over my head preparing her appetite to devour with ease and more voracity; despondency crawls over every reflection; the mind hies away to different parts of the world and sees all that can animate far beyond the reach of its grasp and now recoils with redoubled force on its own misery. Spent the day in reading and investigating except the time occupied in writing the following letter. Though it may seem idle, yet every word is full of meaning. Mr. Ishiel V. Stone was my best and most intimate friend for several years while I studied in Penn Yan, New York. He was an intelligent school teacher of the place and now at Romulus, Seneca County, New York. The letter is here given verbatim.
Eternal Friend,
Long may you consider me sufficiently to allow me the privilege of appropriating that to you. - But what I hinted at in the last communication, continues to roll in sadness over the mind. This you will immediately say need not be the case, if justice has conducted you in every Step. Do not condemn too hard before you become acquainted with the motives that produced the effect. You know that circumstances materially change some particular cases. We parted in a Shower of rain if I am not much mistaken and at that moment, a more tremendous storm was moving with this mind, so violent indeed the mere drops of water distilled from the clouds were but little noticed. - Though from my appearance that evening during the time w were together you nor any present thought that I had the least disquietude and peaceable would this mind now be, had I, when I left that place, left also the source of all its perplexities there; not to molest any one, but had put them in some iron box and in the unfathomed depths of Seneca where daylight nor midnight darkness should ever uncover such a mass of heterogeneous of folly, death, and destruction as they are. - Friend, I think you may think that such writing does not sound well coming from me; indeed this is my own opinion; and I shall attach no blame if you have the same idea. It is what I do not admire, yet it seemed that like coin is necessary in the exchange, and if others insinuate to you without the least foundation, I must do the same when I alone am in full possession of the facts. To you it may appear destitute of meaning, yet this is not the case, every word if it be not well written is full of signification. Think not, dear sir, think not, I repeat it, that I am mad, crazy, delirious, out of any of my proper senses, bewildered or bewitched - but as to a real sound mind, I make no pretension. It is more deficient at present than it was when we held our verbal conversation over the midnight lamp, or in innocent, peaceful, and cheerful perambulations. - Oh! Sacred moments of friendship, now fled forever. No more to be enjoyed by me. You, I hope, will ever have a friend, near and dear, to walk and talk, when fancy may lead you to participate in such amusement, one whose mind, though the shades of nocturnal darkness may surround you, will illuminate the path and shed around the mind the radiant beams of philosophical science. - One whose mind the gloomy ignorance of superstition does not infest, and the torment of fancy's Hell do not flahs, and whose mind is not tormented by the black Demons of deluded imagination. - But I must not go too far. You may have imbibed such sentiments we used rather to dislike! No. God forbid that your mind receive the shackles of such ideas. It is impossible. But I will such pleasant representations and sound nonsense and tell you who I am and where. I have heard of animal magnetism but never until now believed it. I have lived in New York so long that I have become magnetic, for my face looks to the North. With esteem, your friend,
Geo. F. Wilson
Ishiel V. Stone
Evening comes and the young people here seem to be fond of not staying at home during its continuance. i mingled in their company merely to observe the general bend of amusement, or at least I make this the excuse. All except one seemed full of animation, life, and gaiety of the lightest kind. One young and well-formed lady, about fourteen years old, appeared not so much to participate in the hilarity of the evening. She is sober and Silent, as if some desired object did not return the same pure warm feelings that she felt in her youthful bosom. I viewed her with sympathetic feelings, but dare not divert her from her thoughts. It is with the best of motives she repeats and not with mere pretense: It is the genuine feelings of the mind. Young lady, beware of that tongue with which you utter or may declare your preference to one older than yourself who thinks not of returning your esteem, in such purity but at the expense of your peace, happiness, or respectability. Make not the love you have for him known any further than he may show the same to you. Guard well your present feelings, for on the use you make of them may depend your fate, and inconsiderate moment may extract the brightest diadem a female wears, respectability. Yield not to those requests that are not predicated on good motives and are calculated to yield disgrace and leave you alone to weep. Let your youthful mind be at peace for when he whom you love respects sufficiently, he will declare it. Therefore trouble not yourself. Beauty, though decked in all the costly ornaments that wealth can purchase, looks disgusting when it is known that the dark shades of night conceal the most diabolical acts that can be perpetrated by a female. With what thoughts do we look on a female, who will for a small compensation receive any to their embrace? One who, when those guardians of youth, Father and Mother, are silent in slumber will steal from the bed of repose where all should be innocence to meet or wait in the hazel copes, barn, or place appointed of secret retreat any and everyone who may wish to crawl over the ruins of virtue. Sleep, now give me rest.