"The day I left you, I resolved to join some lawless band, and strike your heart with sorrow by your hearing of my crimes. But the thought of your piety and virtue, were like a mountain between me and crime. I went from place to place, but found no peace. Home I dreaded to approach; but after three months of wandering, determined again to behold my parents, and fix on some course of conduct. I went--my father was on his death-bed. His illness was augmented by anxiety for my return, as he had not heard from me since I left Roseville. I received his dying blessing; and in less than two months my mother lay beside him. Watching and grief had been too much, and perhaps the folly of her son added another mortal wound. I was now left sole master of about fifty thousand dollars, and with it a heart almost lost to virtue. I sold out my lands, &c., vested nearly all the amount in stock, and embarked for the Indies, determined to see my native land no more. Tossed on the wide ocean, I was surrounded by ten thousand dangers, more lawless in feeling than the billows around, beneath, above me. I cared for nothing--regarded nothing--and often hoped to find a watery grave. A storm arose--we were shipwrecked--and the near approach of death brought with it the instinctive love of life. A vessel bound to England spied out the wreck; a few only had clung to its ruins. I was taken on board, and after a voyage of a few days was landed at Liverpool. I was then an altered man; five days of hunger, cold and suffering had brought me to reason. I had thought of what had caused all the woes I then endured. I thought of Roseville, and of you--of my native land, and all it once contained; _they_ were, I felt, lost to me, and I sunk into despair. On board the English vessel I had found a pious Quaker and his family. I now longed again to behold them. Having sought them in vain in Liverpool, I advertised for tidings of them; and hearing they were in London, I went thither and found them. They received me like a child, and to them I related my history and my misery. They pointed out to me the only means of present and future happiness. I thought of you, Lavinia, and of your frequent, modest and affectionate exhortations to your brother and myself, to seek the pearl of matchless price. I resolved to strive to win the smile of heaven, and to give up all on earth.