known if I stayed in that part of the country; for that my mother
being dead, several of my relations were come into that part
where we then was, and that I must either discover myself to
them, which in our present circumstances was not proper on
many accounts, or remove; and which to do I knew not, and
that this it was that made me so melancholy and so thoughtful.
He joined with me in this, that it was by no means proper for
me to make myself known to anybody in the circumstances
inwhich we then were; and therefore he told me he would be
willing to remove to any other part of the country, or even to
any other country if I thought fit. But now I had another
difficulty,which was, that if I removed to any other colony, I
put myself out of the way of ever making a due search after
those effects which my mother had left. Again I could never
so much as think of breaking the secret of my former marriage
to my new husband; it was not a story, as I thought, that would
bear telling, nor could I tell what might be the consequences
of it; and it was impossible to search into the bottom of the
thing without making it public all over the country, as well
who I was, as what I now was also.
In this perplexity I continued a great while, and this made my
spouse very uneasy; for he found me perplexed, and yet thought
I was not open with him, and did not let him into every part
of my grievance; and he would often say, he wondered what
he had done that I would not trust him with whatever it was,
especially if it was grievous and afflicting. The truth is, he
ought to have been trusted with everything, for no man in the
world could deserve better of a wife; but this was a thing I
knew not how to open to him, and yet having nobody to
disclose any part of it to,the burthen was too heavy for my
mind; for let them say whatthey please of our sex not being
able to keep a secret, my life is a plain conviction to me of the
contrary; but be it our sex, or the man’s sex, a secret of moment
should always have a confidant,a bosom friend, to whom we
may communicate the joy of it, or the grief of it, be it which
it will, or it will be a double weight upon the spirits, and
perhaps become even insupportable in itself; and this I appeal
to all human testimony for the truth of.
And this is the cause why many times men as well as women,
and men of the greatest and best qualities other ways, yet have
found themselves weak in this part, and have not been able to
bear the weight of a secret joy or of a secret sorrow, but have
been obliged to disclose it, even for the mere giving vent to
themselves, and to unbend the mind oppressed with the load
andweights which attended it. Nor was this any token of folly
orthoughtlessness at all, but a natural consequence of the thing;
and such people, had they struggled longer with the oppression,
would certainly have told it in their sleep, and disclosed the
secret, let it have been of what fatal nature soever, without
regard to the person to whom it might be exposed. This
necessity of nature is a thing which works sometimes with
such vehemence in the minds of those who are guilty of any
atrocious villainy, such as secret murder in particular, that they
have been obliged to discover it, though the consequence
would necessarily be their own destruction. Now, thought it
may be true that the divine justice ought to have the glory of
all those discoveries and confessions, yet ’tis as certain that
Providence, which ordinarily works by the hands of nature,
makes use here of the same naturalcauses to produce those
extraordinary effects.
I could give several remarkable instances of this in my long
conversation with crime and with criminals. I knew one fellow