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“And thus hath been my strife—unbroken, long, My care of being. There can be no foe Like that which follows, and is born of guilt.” CHAPTER I. This is a fearful precipice, but I dare look upon it. What, indeed, may I not dare—what have I not dared! I look before me, and, but for that awful strife—that gross exposure—the hissing scorn—the deriding shout—but for these, the prospect of death, terrible to all men, would have few or no terrors for me. Without adopting too greatly the spirit of cant which makes it a familiar phrase in the mouths of the many, death to me will prove a release from numberless strifes and trials. I do not fear death. Why should I fear that which I may not avoid? I look behind me, and the survey of my crimes, and of the past, however I may regret many of them, and much of it, at least brings with it no fears of the future, and but few compunctious visitings. They were among the occurrences known to, and the necessary sequence in the progress of time and the world’s circumstance. They might have been committed by another as well as by myself. They must have been committed ! I was but an instrument in the hands of a power with which I could not contend. Yet, what a prospect, does this backward glance afford! How full of colors and characters—How curiously dark and bright. I am dazzled and confounded at the various phases of my own life. I wonder at the prodigious strides which my own feet have taken—and as I live and must die, I am bold to declare,—in half the number of instances, without my own consciousness. Should I be considered the criminal, in deeds so committed? Had not my arm been impelled—had not my mood been prompted by powers and an agency apart from my own, I had not struck the blow—I had not scorned the supposed obligation— I had not rejected the terms upon which society tendered me its protection . The demon was not of me, though presiding over, and prevailing within, me. Let those who can think, when the blood is boiling in their temples, analyze its throbs and the source of its impulses— let the skin-dried ascetic, withered over the map and the crucible, undertake the examination as he may. I cannot—I dare not. The life which was given me had a different direction, and I had no right to defeat its purposes. I am a fatalist. Enough for me that it was written! Simms-MFaber final pages:Layout 1 4/10/08 11:50 AM Page 5 My name is Martin Faber. I am the only son of German parents— people of good family, and, so far as paying their debts, and not flying in the face of society could make them so, very good sort of people. I was born in the village of M——, a little settlement of some sixty or seventy families, of quiet habits, and not very brilliant minds. The Fabers were the first among them in fortune and respectability; and, possessed of a strong, shrewd, and somewhat improved sense, my father, Nicholas Faber, contrived, after no very long period, to make himself the first man in the village, which was one of those that, having attained a certain growth, always after remain stationary. It stagnated accordingly; and such being the case, the prospect was exceedingly remote of a diminution in the influence of our family. On the contrary, my father, each successive day, grew more and more supreme in the estimation of the people. He was the only active principle among them. He did their thinking, and they were very willing to depute to him a labour so excessively unpopular—not to say undemocratic. He was their oracle—their counsellor—his word was law, and there were no rival pretensions set up in opposition to his supremacy. Would this had been less the case! Had Nicholas Faber been more his own, than the creature of others, Martin, his son, had not now obliterated all the good impressions of his family, and been called upon, not only to recount his own disgrace and crime, but to pay its penalties. Had he bestowed more of his time upon the regulation of his household, and less upon public affairs, the numberless vicious propensities, strikingly marked in me from childhood...

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