- end_line
- 2906
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 2858
- text
- "The name at the end of this letter will be wholly strange to thee.
Hitherto my existence has been utterly unknown to thee. This letter will
touch thee and pain thee. Willingly would I spare thee, but I can not.
My heart bears me witness, that did I think that the suffering these
lines would give thee, would, in the faintest degree, compare with what
mine has been, I would forever withhold them.
"Pierre Glendinning, thou art not the only child of thy father; in the
eye of the sun, the hand that traces this is thy sister's; yes, Pierre,
Isabel calls thee her brother--her brother! oh, sweetest of words, which
so often I have thought to myself, and almost deemed it profanity for an
outcast like me to speak or think. Dearest Pierre, my brother, my own
father's child! art thou an angel, that thou canst overleap all the
heartless usages and fashions of a banded world, that will call thee
fool, fool, fool! and curse thee, if thou yieldest to that heavenly
impulse which alone can lead thee to respond to the long tyrannizing,
and now at last unquenchable yearnings of my bursting heart? Oh, my
brother!
"But, Pierre Glendinning, I will be proud with thee. Let not my hapless
condition extinguish in me, the nobleness which I equally inherit with
thee. Thou shall not be cozened, by my tears and my anguish, into any
thing which thy most sober hour will repent. Read no further. If it suit
thee, burn this letter; so shalt thou escape the certainty of that
knowledge, which, if thou art now cold and selfish, may hereafter, in
some maturer, remorseful, and helpless hour, cause thee a poignant
upbraiding. No, I shall not, I will not implore thee.--Oh, my brother,
my dear, dear Pierre,--help me, fly to me; see, I perish without
thee;--pity, pity,--here I freeze in the wide, wide world;--no father,
no mother, no sister, no brother, no living thing in the fair form of
humanity, that holds me dear. No more, oh no more, dear Pierre, can I
endure to be an outcast in the world, for which the dear Savior died.
Fly to me, Pierre;--nay, I could tear what I now write,--as I have torn
so many other sheets, all written for thy eye, but which never reached
thee, because in my distraction, I knew not how to write to thee, nor
what to say to thee; and so, behold again how I rave.
"Nothing more; I will write no more;--silence becomes this grave;--the
heart-sickness steals over me, Pierre, my brother.
"Scarce know I what I have written. Yet will I write thee the fatal
line, and leave all the rest to thee, Pierre, my brother.--She that is
called Isabel Banford dwells in the little red farm-house, three miles
from the village, on the slope toward the lake. To-morrow
night-fall--not before--not by day, not by day, Pierre.
THY SISTER, ISABEL."
- title
- Chunk 15