A thousand methods of subsistence, honest but laborious, were at my command, but to these I entertained an irreconcilable aversion.

Ease and the respect attendant upon opulence I was willing to purchase at the price of ever-wakeful suspicion and eternal remorse; but, even at this price, the purchase was impossible.
"The desperateness of my condition became hourly more apparent.

The further I extended my view, the darker grew the clouds which hung over futurity.

Anguish and infamy appeared to be the inseparable conditions of my existence.

There was one mode of evading the evils that impended.
To free myself from self-upbraiding and to shun the persecutions of my fortune was possible only by shaking off life itself.
"One evening, as I traversed the bank of the creek, these dismal meditations were uncommonly intense.