But this was not so easily
achieved as she imagined; and after a most unsuccessful attempt, she
was compelled to act only in subordinate parts. She had lost home,
happiness, and respectability, and had not gained that fame for which
she had sacrificed so much.
But it would be too painful to follow her through all her wretched
life, and tell how each succeeding year she grew more degraded and
more miserable, until at length having run a fearful career of vice
she sank into a dishonored and early grave. No mother's hand wiped the
cold death-dew from her brow; no kind voice whispered hope and
consolation. Alone, poor, degraded, utterly unrepentant, she will
appear before the judgment-seat of Christ; we pause; for we dare not
follow it further.
The sound of her name never echoed through the halls of her childhood.
Her father, stern and silent, buried all memories of his guilty child
deep within his heart; whilst the mother, wan, broken-hearted,
hopeless, wept in secret those tears of bitter agony whose fountain
was perpetually welling afresh.
It is "to point a moral" that we have opened these annals of the past;
and we would have the young ponder well the lesson that this history
teaches.
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