Arthur Mervyn, page 189 by Charles Brockden Brown
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ctions respecting a volume which I filled, when a youth, with extracts from the Roman and Greek poets. Besides this literary purpose, I likewise used to preserve in it the bank-bills with the keeping or carriage of which I chanced to be entrusted. This image led me back to the leather case containing Lodi's property, which was put into my hands at the same time with the volume.
"These images now gave birth to a third conception, which darted on my benighted understanding like an electrical flash. Was it not possible that part of Lodi's property might be enclosed within the leaves of this volume? In hastily turning it over, I recollected to have noticed leaves whose edges by accident or design adhered to each other. Lodi, in speaking of the sale of his father's West-India property, mentioned that the sum obtained for it was forty thousand dollars. Half only of this sum had been discovered by me. How had the remainder been appropriated? Surely this volume contained it.
"The influence of this thought was like the infusion of a new soul into my frame. From torpid and desperate, from inflexible aversion to medicine and food, I was changed in a moment into vivacity and hope, into ravenous avidity for whatever could contribute to my restoration to health.
"I was not without pungent regrets and racking fears. That this volume would be ravished away by creditors or plunderers was possible. Every hour might be that which decided my fate. The first impulse was to seek my dwelling and search for this precious deposit.
"Meanwhile, my perturbations and impatience only exasperated my disease. While chained to my bed, the rumour of pestilence was spread abroad. This event, however, generally calamitous, was propitious to me, and was hailed with satisfaction. It multiplied the chances that my house and its furniture would be unmolested.
"My friend was assiduous and indefatigable in his kindness. My deportment, before and subsequent to the revival of my hopes, was incomprehensible, and argue