Personal Recollections | Page 9

dangerous fascination. One evening my brother was taken to the theatre,
while I, on account of a cold, had to stay at home. To compensate for
this, I was permitted to read the play to him; and that play was, "The
Merchant of Venice." I will not dwell upon the effect. I had already
become fond of such theatrical spectacles as were considered suitable
for children--pantomime and broad farce--and like a child I gazed upon
the glitter, and enjoyed the bustle; but now, seated in a corner, all quiet
about me, and nothing to interfere with the mental world, I drank a cup
of intoxication under which my brain reeled for many a year. The
character of Shylock burst upon me, even as Shakspeare had conceived
it. I revelled in the terrible excitement that it gave rise to; page after

page was stereotyped upon a most retentive memory without an effort,
and during a sleepless night I feasted on the pernicious sweets thus
hoarded in my brain.
Pernicious indeed they were; for from that hour my diligence in study,
my docility of conduct, every thing that is usually regarded as
praiseworthy in a child, sprung from a new motive. I wanted to earn a
reward, and that was no longer a sweet story from the Bible, but
permission to carry into my retreat a volume of Shakspeare. A taste so
unusual at my age was hailed with applause; visitors questioned me on
the different plays, to ascertain my intimate acquaintance with the
characters; but no one, not even my father, could persuade me to recite
a line, or to listen when another attempted it, or to witness the
representation of any play of Shakspeare. This I mention to prove what
a powerful hold the enemy of all godliness must have expected to take
on a spirit so attuned to romance. Reality became insipid, almost
hateful to me; conversation, except that of the literary men to whom I
have alluded, a burden. I imbibed a thorough contempt for women,
children, and household affairs, intrenching myself behind invisible
barriers that few, very few, could pass. Oh how many wasted hours,
how much of unprofitable labor, what wrong to my fellow-creatures,
what robbery of God, must I refer to this ensnaring book. My mind
became unnerved, my judgment perverted, my estimate of people and
things wholly falsified, and my soul wrapped in the vain solace of
unsubstantial enjoyments during years of after sorrow, when but for
this I might have early sought the consolations of the gospel. Parents
know not what they do, when from vanity, thoughtlessness, or
overindulgence, they foster in a young girl what is called a poetical
taste. Those things highly esteemed among men are held in
abomination with God; they thrust him from his creatures' thoughts,
and enshrine a host of polluting idols in his place.
My father, I am sure, wished to check the evil which, as a sensible man,
he could not but foresee; my state of health, however, won a larger
portion of indulgence than was good for me. The doctors into whose
hands I had fallen, were of the school now happily very much exploded:
they had one panacea for almost every ill, and that was the perilous
drug mercury. With it, they rather fed than physicked me; and its
deleterious effects on the nervous system were doubly injurious to me,

as increasing tenfold the excitability that required every curb. Among
all the marvels of my life, the greatest is that of my having grown up to
be one of the healthiest of human beings, and with an inexhaustible
flow of even mirthful spirits; for certainly I was long kept hovering on
the verge of the grave by the barbarous excess to which medical
experiments were carried; and I never entertained a doubt that the total
loss of my hearing before I was ten years old, was owing to a paralysis
induced by such severe treatment. God, however, had his own purposes
to work out, which neither Satan nor man could hinder. He overruled
all for the furtherance of his own gracious designs.
Shut out by this last dispensation from my two delightful resources,
music and conversation, I took refuge in books with tenfold avidity. By
this time I had added the British poets generally to my original stock,
together with such reading as is usually prescribed for young ladies;
and I underwent the infliction of reading aloud to my mother the seven
mortal volumes of Sir Charles Grandison. It was in the fulfilment of
this awful task that I acquired a habit particularly mischievous and
ensnaring--that of reading mechanically, with a total abstraction of
mind from what I was about. This became the easier to me from the
absence of all external sound; and its consequences