heart than even the dreary and hopeless solitude of his prison cell. In the bitterness of his soul he cursed himself and his destiny. True, he was again free to walk the earth, and look upon his fellow-men; but Cain-like, he was cast out as a fugitive and vagabond from among them. The mark of disgrace was set upon him. The stain of guilt and ignominy could never more be wiped from his name; and he saw himself cut off from that part of society which nature and education had fitted him to enjoy. His former visions of greatness could return to him no more; and with the terrible consciousness of his irretrievable fall, his heart became hardened, and his conscience callous to the stings of reproach.
[He was subsequently convicted of a similar crime in another State, and fated to die at last in a prison. A fragment of his history is given, as having been written by himself in his cell, in which he says,] “I know no dates for time. The days, and weeks, and months, are all alike to me. There is but one thought in my bosom continually, from the rising to the setting of the sun; and it gnaws with ceaseless and corroding power on my heart. The tormenting thought that I am always in one place—that I cannot move beyond a certain limit, and that here I must remain until death closes my disgraceful career. My glass is nearly run, and I rejoice at it; although I ought now to have been in the very prime of manhood: but my constitution has given way to the midnight revel, and the unnatural excitement of the gaming table. The inebriating bottle has mingled its deadly poison in my blood; gray hairs have scattered an untimely frost upon my head; and the life of man already appears to me like a little speck in the ocean of eternity. Eternity! No—there is no eternity! I believe it not! I am a renegade from the faith of my fathers! I have laughed at all religion, and derided the idle terrors of a hell, as the mere bugbear of canting hypocrites. Why, then, did I speak of eternity? We die, are laid in the grave, and are as if we had never been . . . . . .Even now, my brain is on fire. Reason totters. Philosophy trembles—and I sink—am lost.” * * *
