I am indeed willing to acknowledge what I have done, an error and presumption. I will call it an error and presumption because I swerved from the accustomed flowery paths of female delicacy.
Such is my experience - not that I ever mourned the loss of a child, but that I consider myself as lost!
November 11, 1802, I arrived at Judge Patterson's at Lisle. This respectable family treated me with every mark of distinction and friendship, and likewise all the people did the same. I really want for words to express my gratitude.
As an overruling providence may succeed our wishes, let us rear an offspring in every respect worthy to fill the most illustrious stations of their predecessors.
In whatever I may be thought to have been unnatural, unwise and indelicate, it is now my most fervent desire it may have a suitable impression on you - and on me, a penitent for every wrong thought and step.
I take it to be from the greatest extremes, both in virtue and in vice, that the uniformly virtuous and reformed in life can derive the greatest and most salutary truths and impressions.
