"The feeling which I owe to my rank and high descent, and the modesty natural to my sex, have until now hindered the sparks of love which have long secretly burned in my bosom, from breaking forth in open flame: but I am weary of the combat, and my heart can no longer resist its bewitching enemy. Have pity for a female, from whom only the utmost degree of burning love could have been able to extort a confession. PTARNNSA." I cannot describe how singularly I felt at this entirely unexpected declaration of love: but as I held it far better to expose myself to the revenge of a furious female, than to sin against the order of nature, by a shameful intimacy with a creature that did not belong to my race, I immediately wrote an answer in the following words: "GRACIOUS LADY,-- "The constant favor his Excellency, your husband, has shown to me; the undeserved benefits he has bestowed upon me; the moral impossibility of fulfilling your gracious desires; and many other reasons, that I will not name, move me to submit to the anger of my gracious lady, rather than consent to an action that would stigmatize me as the most ungrateful and the lowest among all two-legged creatures. Besides, what is desired of me, would be more bitter to satisfy than death itself. This action, if I yielded to it, would effect the ruin and dishonor of one of the most respected families in the State, and my willingness would injure, before all others, that person who has desired it. With the most solemn and sincere assurances of gratitude I must here declare, gracious lady, that under no circumstances can I fulfil your wishes in this respect, although to all other commands I promise a blind obedience. KIKIDORIAN." Underneath I wrote the following admonition: "Think of this heavy sin; Fly ere it be too late: Shall vice, the pander, newly in, Bow virtue to the gate? Let Cupid not ensnare you-- His cunning wiles beware you, The sweets of sin soon vanish-- Its pains, ah! who can banish." This letter I sent to the lady, and it had the effect that I expected; her love was changed to the bitterest hatred:-- In vain her glowing tongue would vie, To tell her frightful agony. Despairing shame her accents clip;-- They freeze upon her snowy lip. No tears did flow; _such_ pain oft dries The blessed current of the eyes: Fell vengeance from her black orbs glanced, While like a fury, she advanced.