Of this
spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more surethat my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the
primitive impulses of the human heart—one of the
indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give
direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred
times, found himself committing a vile or a stupid action, for
no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have
we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best
judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we
understand it to be such? This spirit of perverseness, I say,
came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable
longing of the soul to vex itself—to offer violence to its own
nature—to do wrong for the wrong’s sake only—that urged
me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had
inflicted upon the unoffending brute. One morning, in cold
blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the
limb of a tree;—hung it with the tears streaming from my
eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart;—hung it
because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had
given me no reason of offence;—hung it because I knew that
in so doing I was committing a sin—a deadly sin that would
so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it—if such a
thing were possible—even beyond the reach of the infinite
mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.
On the night of the day on which this most cruel deed
was done, I was aroused from sleep by the cry of fire. The
curtains of my bed were in flames. The whole house was
blazing. It was with great difficulty that my wife, a servant,
and myself, made our escape from the conflagration. The
destruction was complete. My entire worldly wealth was
swallowed up, and I resigned myself thenceforward to
despair.
I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a
sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.