SALTED WITH FIRE.
BYH. M. LE GRANGE.
"YE MUST ALL BE SALTED WITH FIRE, AND EVERY SACRIFICE MUST BE SALTED WITH SALT."NEW YORK: E. J. HALE & SON, PUBLISHERS, MURRAY STREET.
1872.ENTERED according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by E. J. HALE & SON, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. JOSEPH J. LITTLE, Stereotyper, Electrotyper, and Printer, 108 to 114 Wooster St., N. Y.
DEDICATED
TO
MY BELOVED MOTHER,
BY
HER LOVING CHILD,
THE AUTHOR.
SEPTEMBER 27TH, 1871.INTRODUCTION.
FAR away from the scenes of those fierce conflicts between passion and principle—stranded on the leeshore of life, with calmer pulses and a steadier heart, and above all, with the consciousness that I am fast nearing that dim shadow-land at whose misty boundaries life's wildest sorrows lose their sting, and seem no longer what they were when we stood to face them in the full flush of youth and strength—I propose to write out for you, oh, ever true and tender! the history of my life, and by this mark of unsought confidence, vindicate my worthiness of the trust you have so generously reposed in me, since the hour in which you took me, in such brave unquestioning silence, to your heart and home.
Even then I realized all of your noble-heartedness, and felt far more gratitude than words can express, page: 6-7[View Page 6-7] for the delicate generosity which forbore to question, by word or sign, a sorrow mysterious and unflattering to you, whose wedded wife I was. For a long time the wound, though healed, was too tender to be touched; but now, with a heart honestly your own—although, alas! its freshness has all departed—I can bear that you should know all, since the knowledge will prove to you how completely the past has been blotted from my heart and life.
Much of this record was written years ago, when the events and the emotions excited by them were vivid realities, and page after page will wound you deeply. But comfort yourself, as you read, with the thought that the love and agony so sharply outlined in them are all dead, believe me, beyond the power of recall. What is left of affection is wholly yours. And oh, that I had more to give, so that I might in some measure repay the generous devotion lavished so freely upon me.
I have long wished to show you these sealed pages of my life, but I lacked the courage requisite to inflict the pain that would needs ensue from such a disclosure, and, like a coward, deferred it from day to day. But now the ebbing of life's tide warns me that ere long I will be stranded upon the shores of the great Hereafter, and so I gather up the fragments of a life all marred and blighted, and lay them at your feet.
I do not say forgive me, when you see me stripped of all concealments, an erring, suffering woman. I know I have no need to ask it of you, for where there is so much love, there will also be much forgiveness. I only say, believe that at the last—poor and insufficient as the acknowledgment is—I was as faithfully and devotedly in heart as in name,
HELEN STUART.
MADEIRA, June 10th, 1860.