“The troublesome scene of life, my ever dear Julia, is nearly closed, and the hand that now traces these lines will, in a day or two, be no longer capable of communicating, to a beloved and affectionate family, the sentiments of his heart. A painful task yet awaits me—I do not allude to my trial, nor to my execution. These, were it not for the consciousness I feel of the misery you will all suffer on my account, would be trivial in comparison with the pain I endure at addressing you for the last time. You have been kind to me, Julia, beyond example. Your solicitude for my welfare has been unremitting; nor did it leave you a moment’s happiness, as a wayward fate seems from the earliest moment of my life to have presided over my days. I will not now recapitulate the instances of a perverse destiny that seems to have marked me out as the instrument of destruction to all I loved. “Robert and Christopher! I shall shortly join you, and learn for what wise purpose heaven thought fit to select me as your destroyer.[93] My mother, too! O God! my tender, my revered mother! I see her torn locks—her broken heart—her corpse! Heavenly Author of the universe, what have I done to deserve this misery? Footnote 93: Mrs. Smith (Miss Maria Steele) told Dr. Madden that she had often heard John Sheares say with great emotion “that he had caused the death of two of his brothers—Robert, who was drowned in saving him when a boy, and Christopher, who, being reluctant to go to the West Indies, he persuaded to go there, “only to perish of yellow fever.”