I have implied, I believe, that it was for another woman I fled originally to the diggings.

Well, that one was still unmarried, and when the papers were full of me she wrote me a letter which I now believe to have been merely kind.

At the time I was all uncharitableness; but words of mine would fail to tell you how cold this letter left me; it was as a candle lighted in the full blaze of the sun.
With all my bitterness, however, you must not suppose that I had quite lost the feelings which had inspired me at sunset on the lonely ocean, while my mind still held good.

I had been too near my Maker ever to lose those feelings altogether.

They were with me in the better moments of these my worst days.