“While I was reading my letters, my father, armed with his cowhide, came in. I suppose he had seen my light shining through my window, though I always curtained it carefully; and no doubt mother had told him of my going to the village. He seized my letters, and read enough to know they were from a lover. He commanded me to tell him who wrote them, but I was angry at the idea of his coming to whip me like a child, when I was almost sixteen years old. At my refusal, he dragged me from my bed in my chemise and whipped me cruelly. It is two weeks ago, and you can see the marks on me yet. My little sister, who slept with me, woke and screamed, ‘Don’t kill Annie! Father, father, don’t kill Annie!’ At which he laid the whip over her and forced her into silence. I was so outraged that I boldly told him I wished he were burning in the hell he always told me I should go to. I told him to kill me—that it was all I asked of such an inhuman father. This only made him more angry and his blows the harder. Finding I would not tell him who wrote my letters, he left me, commending me to the mercy of God. I told him I despised the God that could be pleased with such as he. He said it was his duty to punish me until he ‘broke my will,’ and that the next morning he should come again. “When the house was silent—I suppose two hours or so after he left—I rose, and taking some matches, for he had carried my lamp away, I groped my way down into the parlor, where my mother kept her purse hidden in a chest of drawers. I stole two dollars, half of all poor mother had secreted from my father.” For some time Annie could not go on. The doctor felt her pulse, and giving her some wine, allowed her to finish.