a speculation for a mind at ease! It is not the persecution,
but the catastrophe which is annexed to it, that makes the difference between
the tyrant and the sufferer! In mere corporal exertion the hunter perhaps is
upon a level with the miserable animal he pursues! But could it be forgotten by
either of us, that at every stage Gines was to gratify his malignant passions by
disseminating charges of the most infamous nature and exciting against me the
abhorrence of every honest bosom, while I was to sustain the still repeated
annihilation of my peace, my character and my bread? Could I by any refinement
of reason convert this dreadful series into sport? I had no philosophy that
qualified me for so extraordinary an effort. If under other circumstances I
could even have entertained so strange an imagination, I was restrained in the
present instance by the necessity of providing for myself the means of
subsistence, and the fetters which through that necessity the forms of human
society imposed upon my exertions.
    In one of those changes of residence to which my miserable fate repeatedly
compelled me, I met, upon a road which I was obliged to traverse, the friend of
my youth, my earliest and best beloved friend, the venerable Collins. It was one
of those misfortunes which served to accumulate my distress, that this man had
quitted the island of Great Britain only a very few weeks before that fatal
reverse of fortune which had ever since pursued me with unrelenting eagerness.
Mr. Falkland, in addition to the large estate he possessed in England, had a
very valuable plantation in the West Indies. This property had been greatly
mismanaged by the person who had the direction of it on the spot; and, after
various promises and evasions on his part, which, however they might serve to
beguile the patience of Mr. Falkland, had been attended with no salutary fruits,
it was resolved that Mr. Collins should go over in person to rectify the abuses
which had so long prevailed. There had even been some idea of his residing
several years, if not settling finally, upon the plantation. From that hour to
the present I had never received the smallest intelligence respecting him.
    I had always considered the circumstance of his critical absence as one of
my severest misfortunes. Mr. Collins had been one of the first persons even in
the period of my infancy to conceive hopes of me as of something above the
common standard, and had contributed more than any other to encourage and assist
my juvenile studies. He had been the executor of the little property of my
father, who had fixed upon him for that purpose in consideration