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The sun might shine or the clouds might lower, but nothing could

appear to me as it had done the day before. A fiend had snatched

from me every hope of future happiness; no creature had ever been

so miserable as I was; so frightful an event is single in the

history of man.

But why should I dwell upon the incidents that followed this last

overwhelming event? Mine has been a tale of horrors; I have

reached their acme, and what I must now relate can but be tedious

to you. Know that, one by one, my friends were snatched away; I

was left desolate. My own strength is exhausted, and I must tell,

in a few words, what remains of my hideous narration.