The novels of Charles Brockden Brown, consisting of Wieland;or, The transformation. Arthur Mervyn; or, Memoirs of the year 1793. Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a sleep-walker. Jane Talbot. Ormond; or, The secret witness. Clara Howard; or, The enthusiasm of love. With a memoir of the author.

THE ENTHUSIASM OF LOVE.

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but the bread thus procured was mingled with many bitter
tears. I conceived myself degraded by my labour; my
penury was aggravated by remembrance of my former
enjoyments. I shrunk from the salutations, or avoided
the path, of my early companions; I imagined that they
would regard my fallen state with contempt, or with pity,
no less hard to be endured than scorn. I laboured sometimes, by unjustifiable and disingenuous artifices, to conceal my employments and my wants, and masked my
cares, as well as I was able, under cheerful looks.
This spirit led me to conceal from Mrs. Valentine my
forlorn condition. I looked forward without hope to the
hour when new labour would be requisite to procure for
me shelter and food. For these I was at present indebted to my friend; but I loved to regard myself merely
as a visitant, and anticipate the time when I should
cease to lie under obligation. Meanwhile, there were
many little and occasional sources of expense, to which
my ill-supplied purse was unequal, while a thousand
obstacles existed, under this roof, to any profitable application of my time: hence arose a new cause of vexation,
and new force to my melancholy.
Allmy stratagems could not conceal from my friend
my poverty. For a time she struggled to accommodate
herself to my scruples, and to aid me, without seeming
to know the extent of my necessities. These struggles
were frustrated by my obstinate pride: I steadily refused
either money or credit.,
At length she resolved to enter into full explanations
with me on the subject. She laid before me, with simplicity and candour, all her suspicions and surmises, and
finally extorted from me a confession that I was not
mistress of a single dollar in the world; that I had no
kinsman to whom I could betake myself for the supply
of my wants, no fund on which I was authorized to draw
for a farthing.
This declaration was heard with the strongest emotion.
She betrayed surprise and disappointment. After a pause,
she expressed her astonishment at this news. She reminded me how little it agreed with past appearances.
She had known me during the latter part of my brother's
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