Herald Of The United States

INFELICIA.—A Character.

She sets like stars that fall, to rise no more.
OTWAY.

How great soever may be the parade, which fine writers make
of the boasted liberties enjoyed by us, women, yet certain it is, that we are
treated in many instances, like the
most abject slaves, and are amenable to
the most cruel and oppressive laws,
formed by those worst of all lawgivers,
Custom, Prejudice, and Caprice.

Infelicia was one of the loveliest of
her sex, the admiration of the men, and
the envy of the women. The perfections of her mind were in no degree inferior to those of her person. At the
age of nineteen she received the addresses of Neronior, whose conversations
appeared to her to be founded on honour, and whose person and address soon
found a way to her heart. Young,
generous and unsuspicious, she believed every thing that fell from his lips,
and she looked up to Neronior as her
guardian angel, who was to be her inseparable companion; the first object
of her thoughts while living, and her
comforter in the hour of death, should
that first be her lot. But, alas! Neronior was base, treacherous, and
perfidious, and Infelicia became the
unhappy victim to his artifice and her
own credulity. Unable to support
the disgrace she now found herself involved in, ruined and deserted, the
lilies and the roses soon faded on her
cheeks, and death, in a short time, finally closed those lovely eyes, which
had but lately shone with such resplendent lustre. Had Infelicia outlived the keen sense of her sufferings,
yet she would probably have experienced the fate of Narcia, who, after having
been seduced by her treacherous lover,
and conveyed far from her friends,
was deserted by him, in a strange
place, exposed to disgrace, misery, and
want. Ashamed, thus dishonoured, to
return to her friends, she was forced to
pursue that scene of life, which soon
terminates in destruction.

Men have made severe laws against
us, yet try every art, and every species of temptation, to induce us to
break them; and, having done this,
punish us for so doing with the unrelenting hand of a tyrant. To this cruel
severity and ungenerous treatment,
we must attribute there being so many
common prostitutes, who infest our
public streets, and who, in their
turn, retaliate misery and disease on
men. I cannot here help lamenting,
that the generality of our sex, who
live with the reputation of unsullied
virtue, are often too severe in their reproaches on these unfortunate girls,
since many of these chaste and rigid
matrons, had not good fortune screened
from the world the little slips and
errors of their youth, would now be
perhaps as severely censured as those,
whose follies and indiscretions are made
publick.

AMELIA.