Whatever there is in me that is not wholly bad and callous, what I suppose would be called my better nature, was just preparing to wake up; and these were the dull, premonitory throes. I was just beginning to come to myself, out of a long lethargy. My remorse was just beginning to kindle. It had not yet sprung into the white-hot continuous fire that it has since become.” In another place he says: “As I write to you now, what I am trying hard to do, is to get at close quarters with the real, bare truth; to look straight and steadily at it; and to tell you, as clearly and as calmly as I can, what I see. But the truth is so deep and subtle, though so unmistakable; and I am so unused to writing; and it is so hard for me to keep down my feelings, that I can't seem to find the right words. After I have written a sentence, when I come to read it over, it seems almost as though I might as well not have written at all. What I write does not express half clearly, or fully, or forcibly enough what is in my mind. So I can't help fearing that you may not understand. Yet my desire that you _shall_ understand is so strong, I am so serious, so much in earnest, I can hardly believe it possible that my words can entirely fail to show you what I mean. If they should do so, if in this letter I do fail to make you understand, then I will say this: the only purpose that I have left in life will be defeated. That is the only object that I care to live for: to make you understand. Oh, I beg of you, try to understand. I have no right to ask you to do any thing, to expect any kindness, any common mercy even, from you: and yet I do ask, I implore you to read this letter through, and to try to understand what I am trying to express. Not a single line is written which I do not feel in the bottom of my heart. I am striving honestly, with all my might, to strip my soul naked before you. And when what I write seems feeble or obscure, please endeavor to pierce through to the meaning and the feeling of it. You have a kind and pitiful heart; and if a human being, no matter how low or base, called out to you in great pain to stoop and do a little thing--a little, easy thing--to soothe and relieve him, I know you would do it. Well, that is the way I call out to you now, and beg you to read and try to understand my letter. As I write, I feel like a dumb man, his heart big and sore with something that presses desperately to be spoken, laboring to speak. Well, what I want to make you understand is this. Very slowly and gradually, by imperceptible degrees, a great change was coming over me, was being wrought _in_ me. This change was really nothing but a return to health, mental and moral health. Ever since that night on which we were to have been married, I had been mentally and morally sick--in an unhealthy, unnatural state. My moral nature, and many of my mental faculties, had lain torpid and inactive, as if deadened--had not performed their functions. Well,