Moll Flanders
by Daniel Defoe
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

of the Famous

Moll Flanders

&c.

Who was Born in Newgate, and during a Life of
continu'd Variety for Threescore Years, besides her
Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a
Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year
a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia,
at last grew Rich, liv'd Honest, and dies a Penitent.
Written from her own Memorandums . . .

by Daniel Defoe

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE

The world is so taken up of late with novels and romances,
that it will be hard for a private history to be taken for genuine,
where the names and other circumstances of the person are
concealed, and on this account we must be content to leave
the reader to pass his own opinion upon the ensuing sheet,
and take it just as he pleases.

The author is here supposed to be writing her own history,
and in the very beginning of her account she gives the reasons
why she thinks fit to conceal her true name, after which there
is no occasion to say any more about that.

It is true that the original of this story is put into new words,
and the style of the famous lady we here speak of is a little
altered; particularly she is made to tell her own tale in modester
words that she told it at first, the copy which came first to
hand having been written in language more like one still in
Newgate than one grown penitent and humble, as she
afterwards pretends to be.

The pen employed in finishing her story, and making it what
you now see it to be, has had no little difficulty to put it into
a dress fit to be seen, and to make it speak language fit to be
read. When a woman debauched from her youth, nay, even
being the offspring of debauchery and vice, comes to give an
account of all her vicious practices, and even to descend to the
particular occasions and circumstances by which she ran through
in threescore years, an author must be hard put to it wrap it
up so clean as not to give room, especially for vicious readers,
to turn it to his disadvantage.

All possible care, however, has been taken to give no lewd
ideas, no immodest turns in the new dressing up of this story;
no, not to the worst parts of  her expressions. To this purpose
some of the vicious part of her life, which could not be
modestly told, is quite left out, and several other parts are
very much shortened. What is left 'tis hoped will not offend
the chastest reader or the modest hearer; and as the best use
is made even of the worst story, the moral 'tis hoped will keep
the reader serious, even where the story might incline him to
be otherwise. To give the history of a wicked life repented of,
necessarily requires that thewicked part should be make as
wicked as the real history of it will bear, to illustrate and give
a beauty to the penitent part, which is certainly the best and
brightest, if related with equal spirit and life.

It is suggested there cannot be the same life, the same brightness
and beauty, in relating the penitent part as is in the criminal
part. If there is any truth in that suggestion, I must be allowed
to say 'tis because there is not the same taste and relish in the
reading, and indeed it is to true that the difference lies not in
the real worth of the subject so much as in the gust and palate
of the reader.

But as this work is chiefly recommended to those who know
how to read it, and how to make the good uses of it which the
story all along recommends to them, so it is to be hoped that
such readers will be more leased with the moral than the fable,
with the application than with the relation, and with the end
of the writer than with the life of the person written of.

There is in this story abundance of delightful incidents, and
all of them usefully applied. There is an agreeable turn artfully
given them in the relating, that naturally instructs the reader,
either one way or other. The first part of her lewd life with the
young gentleman at Colchester has so many happy turns given
it to expose the crime, and warn all whose circumstances are
adapted to it, of the ruinous end of such things, and the foolish,
thoughtless, and abhorred conduct of both the parties, that it
abundantly atones for all the lively description she gives of her
folly and wickedness.

The repentance of her lover at the Bath, and how brought by
the just alarm of his fit of sickness to abandon her; the just
caution given there against even the lawful intimacies of the
dearest friends, and how unable they are to preserve the most
solemn resolutions of virtue without divine assistance; these
are parts which, to a just discernment, will appear to have
more real beauty in them all the amorous chain of story which
introduces it.

In a word, as the whole relation is carefully garbled of all the
levity and looseness that was in it, so it all applied, and with
the utmost care, to virtuous and religious uses. None can,
without being guilty of manifest injustice, cast any reproach
upon it, or upon our design in publishing it.

The advocates for the stage have, in all ages, made this the
great argument to persuade people that their plays are useful,
and that they ought to be allowed in the most civilised and in
the most religious government; namely, that they are applied
to virtuous purposes, and that by the most lively representations,
they fail not to recommend virtue and generous principles, and
to discourage and expose all sorts of vice and corruption of
manners; and were it true that they did so, and that they
constantly adhered to that rule, as the test of their acting on
the theatre, much might be said in their favour.

Throughout the infinite variety of this book, this fundamental
is most strictly adhered to; there is not a wicked action in any
part of it, but is first and last rendered unhappy and unfortunate;
there is not a superlative villain brought upon the stage, but
either he is brought to an unhappy end, or brought to be a
penitent; there is not an ill thing mentioned but it is condemned,
even in the relation, nor a virtuous, just thing but it carries its
praise along with it. What can more exactly answer the rule
laid down, to recommend even those representations of things
which have so many other just objections leaving against them?
namely, of example, of bad company, obscene language, and
the like.

Upon this foundation this book is recommended to the reader
as a work from every part of which something may be learned,
and some just and religious inference is drawn, by which the
reader will have something of instruction, if he pleases to make
use of it.

All the exploits of this lady of fame, in her depredations upon
mankind, stand as so many warnings to honest people to
beware of them, intimating to them by what methods innocent
people are drawn in, plundered and robbed, and by consequence
how to avoid them. Her robbing a little innocent child, dressed
fine by the vanity of the mother, to go to the dancing-school,
is a good memento to such people hereafter, as is likewise her
picking the gold watch from the young lady's side in the Park.

Her getting a parcel from a hare-brained wench at the coaches
in St. John Street; her booty made at the fire, and again at
Harwich, all give us excellent warnings in such cases to be
more present to ourselves in sudden surprises of every sort.

Her application to a sober life and industrious management at
last in Virginia, with her transported spouse, is a story fruitful
of instruction to all the unfortunate creatures who are obliged
to seek their re-establishment abroad, whether by the misery
of transportation or other disaster; letting them know that
diligence and application have their due encouragement, even
in the remotest parts of the world, and that no case can be so
low, so despicable, or so empty of  prospect, but that an
unwearied industry will go a great way to deliver us from it,
will in time raise the meanest creature to appear again the
world, and give him a new case for his life.

There are a few of the serious inferences which we are led
by the hand to in this book, and these are fully sufficient to
justify any man in recommending it to the world, and much
more to justify the publication of it.

There are two of the most beautiful parts still behind, which
this story gives some idea of, and lets us into the parts of them,
but they are either of them too long to be brought into the same
volume, and indeed are, as I may call them, whole volumes of  
themselves, viz.: 1. The life of her governess, as she calls her,  
who had run through, it seems, in a few years, all the eminent  
degrees of a gentlewoman, a whore, and a bawd; a midwife
and a midwife-keeper, as they are called; a pawnbroker, a
childtaker, a receiver of thieves, and of thieves' purchase,
that is to say, of stolen goods; and in a word, herself a thief,
a breeder up of thieves and the like, and yet at last a penitent.

The second is the life of her transported husband, a highwayman,
who it seems, lived a twelve years' life of successful villainy
upon the road, and even at last came off so well as to be a
volunteer transport, not a convict; and in whose life there is
an incredible variety.

But, as I have said, these are things too long to bring in here,
so neither can I make a promise of the coming out by
themselves.

We cannot say, indeed, that this history is carried on quite to
the end of the life of this famous Moll Flanders, as she calls
herself, for nobody can write their own life to the full end of it,
unless they can write it after they are dead. But her husband's
life, being written by a third hand, gives a full account of them
both, how long they lived together in that country, and how
they both came to England again, after about eight years, in
which time they were grown very rich, and where she lived,
it seems, to be very old, but was not so extraordinary a penitent
as she was at first; it seems only that indeed she always spoke
with abhorrence of her former life, and of every part of it.

In her last scene, at Maryland and Virginia, many pleasant
things happened, which makes that part of her life very  
agreeable, but they are not told with the same elegancy as those
accounted for by herself; so it is still to the more advantage that
we break off here.

My true name is so well known in the records or registers
at Newgate, and in the Old Bailey, and there are some things
of such consequence still depending there, relating to my
particular conduct, that it is not be expected I should set my
name or the account of my family to this work; perhaps, after
my death, it may be better known; at present it would not be
proper, no not though a general pardon should be issued, even
without exceptions and reserve of persons or crimes.

It is enough to tell you, that as some of my worst comrades,
who are out of the way of doing me harm (having gone out of
the world by the steps and the string, as I often expected to go ),
knew me by the name of Moll Flanders, so you may give me
leave to speak of myself under that name till I dare own who
I have been, as well as who I am.

I have been told that in one of neighbour nations, whether it
be in France or where else I know not, they have an order from
the king, that when any criminal is condemned, either to die,
or to the galleys, or to be transported, if they leave any children,
as such are generally unprovided for, by the poverty or forfeiture
of their parents, so they are immediately taken into the care of  
the Government, and put into a hospital called the House of  
Orphans, where they are bred up, clothed, fed, taught, and
when fit to go out, are placed out to trades or to services, so
as to be well able to provide for themselves by an honest,
industrious behaviour.

Had this been the custom in our country, I had not been left
a poor desolate girl without friends, without clothes, without
help or helper in the world, as was my fate; and by which I
was not only exposed to very great distresses, even before I
was capable either of understanding my case or how to amend
it, but brought into a course of life which was not only scandalous
in itself, but which in its ordinary course tended to the swift
destruction both of soul and body.

But the case was otherwise here. My mother was convicted
of felony for a certain petty theft scarce worth naming, viz.
having an opportunity of borrowing three pieces of fine holland
of a certain draper in Cheapside. The circumstances are too
long to repeat, and I have heard them related so many ways,
that I can scarce be certain which is the right account.

However it was, this they all agree in, that my mother pleaded
her belly, and being found quick with child, she was respited
for about seven months; in which time having brought me into
the world, and being about again, she was called down, as they
term it, to her former judgment, but obtained the favour of
being transported to the plantations, and left me about half a
year old; and in bad hands, you may be sure.

This is too near the first hours of my life for me to relate
anything of myself but by hearsay; it is enough to mention,
that as I was born in such an unhappy place, I had no parish
to have recourse to for my nourishment in my infancy; nor
can I give the least account how I was kept alive, other than
that, as I have been told, some relation of my mother's took
me away for a while as a nurse, but at whose expense, or by
whose direction, I know nothing at all of it.

The first account that I can recollect, or could ever learn of  
myself, was that I had wandered among a crew of those people
they call gypsies, or Egyptians; but I believe it was but a very
little while that I had been among them, for I had not had my
skin discoloured or blackened, as they do very young to all the
children they carry about with them; nor can I tell how I came
among them, or how I got from them.

It was at Colchester, in Essex, that those people left me; and
I have a notion in my head that I left them there (that is, that
I hid myself and would not go any farther with them), but I am
not able to be particular in that account; only this I remember,
that being taken up by some of the parish officers of Colchester,
I gave an account that I came into the town with the gypsies,
but that I would not go any farther with them, and that so they
had left me, but whither they were gone that I knew not, nor
could they expect it of me; for though they send round the
country to inquire after them, it seems they could not be found.

I was now in a way to be provided for; for though I was not a
parish charge upon this or that part of the town by law, yet as
my case came to be known, and that I was too young to do any
work, being not above three years old, compassion moved the
magistrates of the town to order some care to be taken of me,
and I became one of their own as much as if I had been born
in the place.

In the provision they made for me, it was my good hap to be
put to nurse, as they call it, to a woman who was indeed poor
but had been in better circumstances, and who got a little
livelihood by taking such as I was supposed to be, and keeping
them with all necessaries, till they were at a certain age, in
which it might be supposed they might go to service or get
their own bread.

This woman had also had a little school, which she kept to
teach children to read and to work; and having, as I have said,
lived before that in good fashion, she bred up the children she
took with a great deal of art, as well as with a great deal of care.

But that which was worth all the rest, she bred them up very
religiously, being herself a very sober, pious woman, very house-
wifely and clean, and very mannerly, and with good behaviour.
So that in a word, expecting a plain diet, coarse lodging, and
mean clothes, we were brought up as mannerly and as genteelly
as if we had been at the dancing-school.

I was continued here till I was eight years old, when I was
terrified with news that the magistrates (as I think they called
them) had ordered that I should go to service. I was able to
do but very little service wherever I was to go, except it was
to run of errands and be a drudge to some cookmaid, and this
they told me of often, which put me into a great fright; for I
had a thorough aversion to going to service, as they called it
(that is, to be a servant), though I was so young; and I told my
nurse, as we called her, that I believed I could get my living
without going to service, if she pleased to let me; for she had
taught me to work with my needle, and spin worsted, which
is the chief trade of that city, and I told her that if she would
keep me, I would work for her, and I would work very hard.

I talked to her almost every day of working hard; and, in short,
I did nothing but work and cry all day, which grieved the good,
kind woman so much, that at last she began to be concerned
for me, for she loved me very well.

One day after this, as she came into the room where all we
poor children were at work, she sat down just over against me,
not in her usual place as mistress, but as if she set herself on
purpose to observe me and see me work. I was doing something
she had set me to; as I remember, it was marking some shirts
which she had taken to make, and after a while she began to
talk to me. 'Thou foolish child,' says she, 'thou art always
crying (for I was crying then); 'prithee, what dost cry for?'  
'Because they will take me away,' says I, 'and put me to service,
and I can't work housework.'  'Well, child,' says she, 'but
though you can't work housework, as you call it, you will learn
it in time, and they won't put you to hard things at first.'  'Yes,
they will,' says I, 'and if I can't do it they will beat me, and the
maids will beat me to make me do great work, and I am but a
little girl and I can't do it'; and then I cried again, till I could
not speak any more to her.

This moved my good motherly nurse, so that she from that
time resolved I should not go to service yet; so she bid me not
cry, and she would speak to Mr. Mayor, and I should not go to
service till I was bigger.

Well, this did not satisfy me, for to think of going to service
was such a frightful thing to me, that if she had assured me I
should not have gone till I was twenty years old, it would have
been the same to me; I should have cried, I believe, all the
time, with the very apprehension of its being to be so at last.

When she saw that I was not pacified yet, she began to be
angry with me. 'And what would you have?' says she; 'don't
I tell you that you shall not go to service till your are bigger?'  
'Ay,' said I, 'but then I must go at last.'  'Why, what?' said she;
'is the girl mad? What would you be -- a gentlewoman?'
'Yes,' says I, and cried heartily till I roard out again.

This set the old gentlewoman a-laughing at me, as you may be
sure it would. 'Well, madam, forsooth,' says she, gibing at me,
'you would be a gentlewoman; and pray how will you come to
be a gentlewoman? What! will you do it by your fingers' end?'

'Yes,' says I again, very innocently.

'Why, what can you earn?' says she; 'what can you get at your
work?'

'Threepence,' said I, 'when I spin, and fourpence when I work
plain work.'

'Alas! poor gentlewoman,' said she again, laughing, 'what will
that do for thee?'

'It will keep me,' says I, 'if you will let me live with you.'  And
this I said in such a poor petitioning tone, that it made the poor
woman's heart yearn to me, as she told me afterwards.

'But,' says she, 'that will not keep you and buy you clothes
too; and who must buy the little gentlewoman clothes?' says
she, and smiled all the while at me.

'I will work harder, then,' says I, 'and you shall have it all.'

'Poor child! it won't keep you,' says she; 'it will hardly keep
you in victuals.'

'Then I will have no victuals,' says I, again very innocently;
'let me but live with you.'

'Why, can you live without victuals?' says she.

'Yes,' again says I, very much like a child, you may be sure,
and still I cried heartily.

I had no policy in all this; you may easily see it was all nature;
but it was joined with so much innocence and so much passion
that, in short, it set the good motherly creature a-weeping too,
and she cried at last as fast as I did, and then took me and led
me out of the teaching-room. 'Come,' says she, 'you shan't
go to service; you shall live with me'; and this pacified me
for the present.

Some time after this, she going to wait on the Mayor, and
talking of such things as belonged to her business, at last my
story came up, and my good nurse told Mr. Mayor the whole
tale. He was so pleased with it, that he would call his lady
and his two daughters to hear it, and it made mirth enough
among them, you may be sure.

However, not a week had passed over, but on a sudden comes
Mrs. Mayoress and her two daughters to the house to see my
old nurse, and to see her school and the children. When they
had looked about them a little, 'Well, Mrs.----,' says the
Mayoress to my nurse, 'and pray which is the little lass that
intends to be a gentlewoman?'  I heard her, and I was terribly
frighted at first, though I did not know why neither; but Mrs.
Mayoress comes up to me. 'Well, miss,' says she, 'and what
are you at work upon?'  The word miss was a language that
had hardly been heard of in our school, and I wondered what
sad name it was she called me. However, I stood up, made a
curtsy, and she took my work out of my hand, looked on it,
and said it was very well; then she took up one of the hands.
'Nay,' says she, 'the child may come to be a gentlewoman for
aught anybody knows; she has a gentlewoman's hand,' says she.
This pleased me mightily, you may be sure; but Mrs. Mayoress
did not stop there, but giving me my work again, she put her
hand in her pocket, gave me a shilling, and bid me mind my
work, and learn to work well, and I might be a gentlewoman
for aught she knew.

Now all this while my good old nurse, Mrs. Mayoress, and all
the rest of them did not understand me at all, for they meant
one sort of thing by the word gentlewoman, and I meant quite
another; for alas! all I understood by being a gentlewoman was
to be able to work for myself, and get enough to keep me
without that terrible bugbear going to service, whereas they
meant to live great, rich and high, and I know not what.

Well, after Mrs. Mayoress was gone, her two daughters came
in, and they called for the gentlewoman too, and they talked
a long while to me, and I answered them in my innocent way;
but always, if they asked me whether I resolved to be a
gentlewoman, I answered Yes. At last one of them asked me
what a gentlewoman was? That puzzled me much; but,
however, I explained myself negatively, that it was one that
did not go to service, to do housework. They were pleased
to be familiar with me, and like my little prattle to them, which,
it seems, was agreeable enough to them, and they gave me
money too.

As for my money, I gave it all to my mistress-nurse, as I called
her, and told her she should have all I got for myself when I
was a gentlewoman, as well as now. By this and some other
of my talk, my old tutoress began to understand me about what
I meant by being a gentlewoman, and that I understood by it
no more than to be able to get my bread by my own work; and
at last she asked me whether it was not so.

I told her, yes, and insisted on it, that to do so was to be a
gentlewoman; 'for,' says I, 'there is such a one,' naming a
woman that mended lace and washed the ladies' laced-heads;
'she,' says I, 'is a gentlewoman, and they call her madam.'

"Poor child,' says my good old nurse, 'you may soon be such
a gentlewoman as that, for she is a person of ill fame, and has
had two or three bastards.'

I did not understand anything of that; but I answered, 'I am
sure they call her madam, and she does not go to service nor
do housework'; and therefore I insisted that she was a
gentlewoman, and I would be such a gentlewoman as that.

The ladies were told all this again, to be sure, and they made
themselves merry with it, and every now and then the young
ladies, Mr. Mayor's daughters, would come and see me, and
ask where the little gentlewoman was, which made me not a
little proud of myself.

This held a great while, and I was often visited by these young
ladies, and sometimes they brought others with them; so that I
was known by it almost all over the town.

I was now about ten years old, and began to look a little  
womanish, for I was mighty grave and humble, very mannerly,
and as I had often heard the ladies say I was pretty, and would
be a very handsome woman, so you may be sure that hearing
them say so made me not a little proud. However, that pride
had no ill effect upon me yet; only, as they often gave me
money, and I gave it to my old nurse, she, honest woman,
was so just to me as to lay it all out again for me, and gave
me head-dresses, and linen, and gloves, and ribbons, and I
went very neat, and always clean; for that I would do, and if
I had rags on, I would always be clean, or else I would dabble
them in water myself; but, I say, my good nurse, when I had
money given me, very honestly laid it out for me, and would
always tell the ladies this or that was bought with their money;
and this made them oftentimes give me more, till at last I was
indeed called upon by the magistrates, as I understood it, to
go out to service; but then I was come to be so good a
workwoman myself, and the ladies were so kind to me, that it
was plain I could maintain myself--that is to say, I could earn
as much for my nurse as she was able by it to keep me--so she
told them that if they would give her leave, she would keep
the gentlewoman, as she called me, to be her assistant and
teach the children, which I was very well able to do; for I was
very nimble at my work, and had a good hand with my needle,
though I was yet very young.

But the kindness of the ladies of the town did not end here,
for when they came to understand that I was no more maintained
by the public allowance as before, they gave me money oftener
than formerly; and as I grew up they brought me work to do
for them, such as linen to make, and laces to mend, and heads
to dress up, and not only paid me for doing them, but even
taught me how to do them; so that now I was a gentlewoman
indeed, as I understood that word, I not only found myself
clothes and paid my nurse for my keeping, but got money in
my pocket too beforehand.

The ladies also gave me clothes frequently of their own or
their children's; some stockings, some petticoats, some gowns,
some one thing, some another, and these my old woman
managed for me like a mere mother, and kept them for me,
obliged me to mend them, and turn them and twist them to
the best advantage, for she was a rare housewife.

At last one of the ladies took so much fancy to me that she
would have me home to her house, for a month, she said, to
be among her daughters.

Now, though this was exceeding kind in her, yet, as my old
good woman said to her, unless she resolved to keep me for
good and all, she would do the little gentlewoman more harm
than good. 'Well,' says the lady, 'that's true; and therefore I'll
only take her home for a week, then, that I may see how my
daughters and she agree together, and how I like her temper,
and then I'll tell you more; and in the meantime, if anybody
comes to see her as they used to do, you may only tell them
you have sent her out to my house.'

This was prudently managed enough, and I went to the lady's
house; but I was so pleased there with the young ladies, and
they so pleased with me, that I had enough to do to come away,
and they were as unwilling to part with me.

However, I did come away, and lived almost a year more with
my honest old woman, and began now to be very helpful to
her; for I was almost fourteen years old, was tall of my age,
and looked a little womanish; but I had such a taste of genteel
living at the lady's house that I was not so easy in my old
quarters as I used to be, and I thought it was fine to be a
gentlewoman indeed, for I had quite other notions of a
gentlewoman now than I had before; and as I thought, I say,
that it was fine to be a gentlewoman, so I loved to be among
gentlewomen, and therefore I longed to be there again.

About the time that I was fourteen years and a quarter old,
my good nurse, mother I rather to call her, fell sick and died.
I was then in a sad condition indeed, for as there is no great
bustle in putting an end to a poor body's family when once
they are carried to the grave, so the poor good woman being
buried, the parish children she kept were immediately removed
by the church-wardens; the school was at an end, and the
children of it had no more to do but just stay at home till they
were sent somewhere else; and as for what she left, her daughter,
a married woman with six or seven children, came and swept
it all away at once, and removing the goods, they had no more
to say to me than to jest with me, and tell me that the little
gentlewoman might set up for herself if she pleased.

I was frighted out of my wits almost, and knew not what to do,
for I was, as it were, turned out of doors to the wide world, and
that which was still worse, the old honest woman had two-and-
twenty shillings of mine in her hand, which was all the estate the
little gentlewoman had in the world; and when I asked the
daughter for it, she huffed me and laughed at me, and told me
she had nothing to do with it.

It was true the good, poor woman had told her daughter of it,
and that it lay in such a place, that it was the child's money,
and  had called once or twice for me to give it me, but I was,
unhappily, out of the way somewhere or other, and when I
came back she was past being in a condition to speak of it.
However, the daughter was so honest afterwards as to give it
me, though at first she used me cruelly about it.

Now was I a poor gentlewoman indeed, and I was just that
very night to be turned into the wide world; for the daughter
removed all the goods, and I had not so much as a lodging to
go to, or a bit of bread to eat. But it seems some of the neighbours,
who had known my circumstances, took so much compassion
of me as to acquaint the lady in whose family I had been a week,
as I mentioned above; and immediately she sent her maid to
fetch me away, and two of her daughters came with the maid
though unsent. So I went with them, bag and baggage, and
with a glad heart, you may be sure. The fright of my condition
had made such an impression upon me, that I did not want now
to be a gentlewoman, but was very willing to be a servant, and
that any kind of servant they thought fit to have me be.

But my new generous mistress, for she exceeded the good
woman I was with before, in everything, as well as in the
matter of estate; I say, in everything except honesty; and for
that, though this was a lady most exactly just, yet I must not
forget to say on all occasions, that the first, though poor, was
as uprightly honest as it was possible for any one to be.

I was no sooner carried away, as I have said, by this good
gentlewoman, but the first lady, that is to say, the Mayoress
that was, sent her two daughters to take care of me; and another
family which had taken notice of me when I was the little
gentlewoman, and had given me work to do, sent for me after
her, so that I was mightily made of, as we say; nay, and they
were not a little angry, especially madam the Mayoress, that
her friend had taken me away from her, as she called it; for,
as she said, I was hers by right, she having been the first that
took any notice of me. But they that had me would not part
with me; and as for me, though I should have been very well
treated with any of the others, yet I could not be better than
where I was.

Here I continued till I was between seventeen and eighteen
years old, and here I had all the advantages for my education
that could be imagined; the lady had masters home to the
house to teach her daughters to dance, and to speak French,
and to write, and other to teach them music; and I was always
with them, I learned as fast as they; and though the masters
were not appointed to teach me, yet I learned by imitation and
inquiry all that they learned by instruction and direction; so
that, in short, I learned to dance and speak French as well as
any of them, and to sing much better, for I had a better voice
than any of them. I could not so readily come at playing on
the harpsichord or spinet, because I had no instrument of my
own to practice on, and could only come at theirs in the intervals
when they left it, which was uncertain; but yet I learned tolerably
well too, and the young ladies at length got two instruments,
that is to say, a harpsichord and a spinet too, and then they
taught me themselves. But as to dancing, they could hardly
help my learning country-dances, because they always wanted
me to make up even number; and, on the other hand, they were
as heartily willing to learn me everything that they had been
taught themselves, as I could be to take the learning.

By this means I had, as I have said above, all the advantages
of education that I could have had if I had been as much a
gentlewoman as they were with whom I lived; and in some
things I had the advantage of my ladies, though they were my
superiors; but they were all the gifts of nature, and which all
their fortunes could not furnish. First, I was apparently
handsomer than any of them; secondly, I was better shaped;
and, thirdly, I sang better, by which I mean I had a better voice;
in all which you will, I hope, allow me to say, I do not speak
my own conceit of myself, but the opinion of all that knew
the family.

I had with all these the common vanity of my sex, viz. that
being really taken for very handsome, or, if you please, for a
great beauty, I very well knew it, and had as good an opinion
of myself as anybody else could have of me; and particularly
I loved to hear anybody speak of it, which could not but happen
to me sometimes, and was a great satisfaction to me.

Thus far I have had a smooth story to tell of myself, and in all
this part of my life I not only had the reputation of living in a
very good family, and a family noted and respected everywhere
for virtue and sobriety, and for every valuable thing; but I had
the character too of a very sober, modest, and virtuous young
woman, and such I had always been; neither had I yet any
occasion to think of anything else, or to know what a temptation
to wickedness meant.

But that which I was too vain of was my ruin, or rather my
vanity was the cause of it. The lady in the house where I was
had two sons, young gentlemen of very promising parts and
of extraordinary behaviour, and it was my misfortune to be
very well with them both, but they managed themselves with
me in a quite different manner.

The eldest, a gay gentleman that knew the town as well as the
country, and though he had levity enough to do an ill-natured
thing, yet had too much judgment of things to pay too dear
for his pleasures; he began with the unhappy snare to all
women, viz. taking notice upon all occasions how pretty I was,
as he called it, how agreeable, how well-carriaged, and the
like; and this he contrived so subtly, as if he had known as
well how to catch a woman in his net as a partridge when he
went a-setting; for he would contrive to be talking this to his
sisters when, though I was not by, yet when he knew I was
not far off but that I should be sure to hear him. His sisters
would return softly to him, 'Hush, brother, she will hear you;
she is but in the next room.'  Then he would put it off and talk
softlier, as if he had not know it, and begin to acknowledge he
was wrong; and then, as if he had forgot himself, he would
speak aloud again, and I, that was so well pleased to hear it,
was sure to listen for it upon all occasions.

After he had thus baited his hook, and found easily enough
the method how to lay it in my way, he played an opener game;
and one day, going by his sister's chamber when I was there,
doing something about dressing her, he comes in with an air
of gaiety. 'Oh, Mrs. Betty,' said he to me, 'how do you do,
Mrs. Betty? Don't your cheeks burn, Mrs. Betty?'  I made a
curtsy and blushed, but said nothing. 'What makes you talk so,
brother?' says the lady. 'Why,' says he, 'we have been talking
of her below-stairs this half-hour.'  'Well,' says his sister,
'you can say no harm of her, that I am sure, so 'tis no matter
what you have been talking about.' 'Nay,' says he, ''tis so far
from talking harm of her, that we have been talking a great
deal of good, and a great many fine things have been said of
Mrs. Betty, I assure you; and particularly, that she is the
handsomest young woman in Colchester; and, in short, they
begin to toast her health in the town.'

'I wonder at you, brother,' says the sister. Betty wants but one
thing, but she had as good want everything, for the market is
against our sex just now; and if a young woman have beauty,
birth, breeding, wit, sense, manners, modesty, and all these to
an extreme, yet if she have not money, she's nobody, she had
as good want them all for nothing but money now recommends
a woman; the men play the game all into their own hands.'

Her younger brother, who was by, cried, 'Hold, sister, you run
too fast; I am an exception to your rule. I assure you, if I find
a woman so accomplished as you talk of, I say, I assure you, I
would not trouble myself about the money.'

'Oh,' says the sister, 'but you will take care not to fancy one,
then, without the money.'

'You don't know that neither,' says the brother.

'But why, sister,' says the elder brother, 'why do you exclaim
so at the men for aiming so much at the fortune? You are none
of them that want a fortune, whatever else you want.'

'I understand you, brother,' replies the lady very smartly; 'you
suppose I have the money, and want the beauty; but as times
go now, the first will do without the last, so I have the better
of my neighbours.'

'Well,' says the younger brother, 'but your neighbours, as you
call them, may be even with you, for beauty will steal a husband
sometimes in spite of money, and when the maid chances to be
handsomer than the mistress, she oftentimes makes as good a
market, and rides in a coach before her.'

I thought it was time for me to withdraw and leave them, and
I did so, but not so far but that I heard all their discourse, in
which I heard abundance of the fine things said of myself,
which served to prompt my vanity, but, as I soon found, was
not the way to increase my interest in the family, for the sister
and the younger brother fell grievously out about it; and as he
said some very disobliging things to her upon my account, so
I could easily see that she resented them by her future conduct
to me, which indeed was very unjust to me, for I had never
had the least thought of what she suspected as to her younger
brother; indeed, the elder brother, in his distant, remote way,
had said a great many things as in jest, which I had the folly
to believe were in earnest, or to flatter myself with the hopes
of what I ought to have supposed he never intended, and
perhaps never thought of.

It happened one day that he came running upstairs, towards
the room where his sisters used to sit and work, as he often
used to do; and calling to them before he came in, as was his
way too, I, being there alone, stepped to the door, and said,
'Sir, the ladies are not here, they are walked down the garden.'  
As I stepped forward to say this, towards the door, he was just
got to the door, and clasping me in his arms, as if it had been
by chance, 'Oh, Mrs. Betty,' says he, 'are you here? That's
better still; I want to speak with you more than I do with them';
and then, having me in his arms, he kissed me three or four times.

I struggled to get away, and yet did it but faintly neither, and
he held me fast, and still kissed me, till he was almost out of
breath, and then, sitting down, says, 'Dear Betty, I am in love
with you.'

His words, I must confess, fired my blood; all my spirits flew
about my heart and put me into disorder enough, which he
might easily have seen in my face. He repeated it afterwards
several times, that he was in love with me, and my heart spoke
as plain as a voice, that I liked it; nay, whenever he said, 'I am
in love with you,' my blushes plainly replied, 'Would you
were, sir.'

However, nothing else passed at that time; it was but a sur-
prise, and when he was gone I soon recovered myself again.
He had stayed longer with me, but he happened to look out
at the window and see his sisters coming up the garden, so
he took his leave, kissed me again, told me he was very serious,
and I should hear more of him very quickly, and away he went,
leaving me infinitely pleased, though surprised; and had there
not been one misfortune in it, I had been in the right, but the
mistake lay here, that Mrs. Betty was in earnest and the
gentleman was not.

From this time my head ran upon strange things, and I may
truly say I was not myself; to have such a gentleman talk to
me of being in love with me, and of my being such a charming
creature, as he told me I was; these were things I knew not
how to bear, my vanity was elevated to the last degree. It is
true I had my head full of pride, but, knowing nothing of the
wickedness of the times, I had not one thought of my own
safety or of my virtue about me; and had my young master
offered it at first sight, he might have taken any liberty he
thought fit with me; but he did not see his advantage, which
was my happiness for that time.

After this attack it was not long but he found an opportunity
to catch me again, and almost in the same posture; indeed, it
had more of design in it on his part, though not on my part. It
was thus: the young ladies were all gone a-visiting with their
mother; his brother was out of town; and as for his father, he
had been in London for a week before. He had so well watched
me that he knew where I was, though I did not so much as know
that he was in the house; and he briskly comes up the stairs and,
seeing me at work, comes into the room to me directly, and
began just as he did before, with taking me in his arms, and
kissing me for almost a quarter of an hour together.

It was his younger sister's chamber that I was in, and as there
was nobody in the house but the maids below-stairs, he was,
it may be, the ruder; in short, he began to be in earnest with me
indeed. Perhaps he found me a little too easy, for God knows
I made no resistance to him while he only held me in his arms
and kissed me; indeed, I was too well pleased with it to resist
him much.

However, as it were, tired with that kind of work, we sat down,
and there he talked with me a great while; he said he was
charmed with me, and that he could not rest night or day till
he had told me how he was in love with me, and, if I was able
to love him again, and would make him happy, I should be the
saving of his life, and many such fine things. I said little to
him again, but easily discovered that I was a fool, and that I
did not in the least perceive what he meant.

Then he walked about the room, and taking me by the hand,
I walked with him; and by and by, taking his advantage, he
threw me down upon the bed, and kissed me there most
violently; but, to give him his due, offered no manner of
rudeness to me, only kissed a great while. After this he
thought he had heard somebody come upstairs, so got off from
the bed, lifted me up, professing a great deal of love for me,
but told me it was all an honest affection, and that he meant
no ill to me; and with that he put five guineas into my hand,
and went away downstairs.

I was more confounded with the money than I was before with
the love, and began to be so elevated that I scarce knew the
ground I stood on. I am the more particular in this part, that
if my story comes to be read by any innocent young body, they
may learn from it to guard themselves against the mischiefs
which attend an early knowledge of their own beauty. If a
young woman once thinks herself handsome, she never doubts
the truth of any man that tells her he is in love with her; for if
she believes herself charming enough to captivate him, 'tis
natural to expect the effects of it.

This young gentleman had fired his inclination as much as he
had my vanity, and, as if he had found that he had an opportunity
and was sorry he did not take hold of it, he comes up again in
half an hour or thereabouts, and falls to work with me again as
before, only with a little less introduction.

And first, when he entered the room, he turned about and shut
the door. 'Mrs. Betty,' said he, 'I fancied before somebody
was coming upstairs, but it was not so; however,' adds he,
'if they find me in the room with you, they shan't catch me
a-kissing of you.' I told him I did not know who should be
coming upstairs, for I believed there was nobody in the house
but the cook and the other maid, and they never came up those
stairs. 'Well, my dear,' says he, ''tis good to be sure, however';
and so he sits down, and we began to talk. And now, though
I was still all on fire with his first visit, and said little, he did
as it were put words in my mouth, telling me how passionately
he loved me, and that though he could not mention such a thing
till he came to this estate, yet he was resolved to make me happy
then, and himself too; that is to say, to marry me, and abundance
of such fine things, which I, poor fool, did not understand the
drift of, but acted as if there was no such thing as any kind of
love but that which tended tomatrimony; and if he had spoke
of that, I had no room, as well as no power, to have said no;
but we were not come that length yet.

We had not sat long, but he got up, and, stopping my very
breath with kisses, threw me upon the bed again; but then
being both well warmed, he went farther with me than decency
permits me to mention, nor had it been in my power to have
denied him at that moment, had he offered much more than
he did.

However, though he took these freedoms with me, it did not
go to that which they call the last favour, which, to do him
justice, he did not attempt; and he made that self-denial of his
a plea for all his freedoms with me upon other occasions after
this. When this was over, he stayed but a little while, but he
put almost a handful of gold in my hand, and left me, making
a thousand protestations of his passion for me, and of his
loving me above all the women in the world.

It will not be strange if I now began to think, but alas! it was
but with very little solid reflection. I had a most unbounded
stock of vanity and pride, and but a very little stock of virtue.
I did indeed case sometimes with myself what young master
aimed at, but thought of nothing but the fine words and the
gold; whether he intended to marry me, or not to marry me,
seemed a matter of no great consequence to me; nor did my
thoughts so much as suggest to me the necessity of making
any capitulation for myself, till he came to make a kind of
formal proposal to me, as you shall hear presently.

Thus I gave up myself to a readiness of being ruined without
the least concern and am a fair memento to all young women
whose vanity prevails over their virtue. Nothing was ever so
stupid on both sides. Had I acted as became me, and resisted
as virtue and honour require, this gentleman had either desisted
his attacks, finding no room to expect the accomplishment of
his design, or had made fair and honourable proposals of
marriage; in which case, whoever had blamed him, nobody
could have blamed me. In short, if he had known me, and
how easy the trifle he aimed at was to be had, he would have
troubled his head no farther, but have given me four or five
guineas, and have lain with me the next time he had come at me.
And if I had known his thoughts, and how hard he thought I
would be to be gained, I might have made my own terms with
him; and if I had not capitulated for an immediate marriage,
I might for a maintenance till marriage, and might have had
what I would; for he was already rich to excess, besides what
he had in expectation; but I seemed wholly to have abandoned
all such thoughts as these, and was taken up only with the pride
of my beauty, and of being beloved by such a gentleman. As
for the gold, I spent whole hours in looking upon it; I told the
guineas over and over a thousand times a day. Never poor
vain creature was so wrapt up with every part of the story as
I was, not considering what was before me, and how near my
ruin was at the door; indeed, I think I rather wished for that
ruin than studied to avoid it.

In the meantime, however, I was cunning enough not to give
the least room to any in the family to suspect me, or to imagine
that I had the least correspondence with this young gentleman.
I scarce ever looked towards him in public, or answered if he
spoke to me when anybody was near us; but for all that, we
had every now and then a little encounter, where we had room
for a word or two, an now and then a kiss, but no fair opportunity
for the mischief intended; and especially considering that he
made more circumlocution than, if he had known by thoughts,
he had occasion for; and the work appearing difficult to him,
he really made it so.

But as the devil is an unwearied tempter, so he never fails to
find opportunity for that wickedness he invites to. It was one
evenine that I was in the garden, with his two younger sisters
and himself, and all very innocently merry, when he found
means to convey a note into my hand, by which he directed
me to understand that he would to-morrow desire me publicly
to go of an errand for him into the town, and that I should see
him somewhere by the way.

Accordingly, after dinner, he very gravely says to me, his
sisters being all by, 'Mrs. Betty, I must ask a favour of you.'  
'What's that?' says his second sister. 'Nay, sister,' says he
very gravely, 'if you can't spare Mrs. Betty to-day, any other
time will do.'  Yes, they said, they could spare her well enough,
and the sister begged pardon for asking, which they did but of
mere course, without any meaning. 'Well, but, brother,' says
the eldest sister, 'you must tell Mrs. Betty what it is; if it be
any private business that we must not hear, you may call her
out. There she is.'  'Why, sister,' says the gentleman very
gravely, 'what do you mean? I only desire her to do into the
High Street' (and then he pulls out a turnover), 'to such a shop';
and then he tells them a long story of two fine neckcloths he
had bid money for, and he wanted to have me go and make an
errand to buy a neck to the turnover that he showed, to see if
they would take my money for the neckcloths; to bid a shilling
more, and haggle with them; and then he made more errands,
and so continued to have such petty business to do, that I should
be sure to stay a good while.

When he had given me my errands, he told them a long story
of a visit he was going to make to a family they all knew, and
where was to be such-and-such gentlemen, and how merry
they were to be, and very formally asks his sisters to go with
him, and they as formally excused themselves, because of
company that they had notice was to come and visit them that
afternoon; which, by the way, he had contrived on purpose.

He had scarce done speaking to them, and giving me my
errand, but his man came up to tell him that Sir W---- H----'s
coach stopped at the door; so he runs down, and comes up
again immediately. 'Alas!' says he aloud, 'there's all my
mirth spoiled at once; sir W---- has sent his coach for me,
and desires to speak with me upon some earnest business.'  
It seems this Sir W--- was a gentleman who lived about three
miles out of town, to whom he had spoken on purpose the day
before, to lend him his chariot for a particular occasion, and
had appointed it to call for him, as it did, about three o'clock.

Immediately he calls for his best wig, hat, and sword, and
ordering his man to go to the other place to make his excuse--
that was to say, he made an excuse to send his man away--he
prepares to go into the coach. As he was going, he stopped a
while, and speaks mighty earnestly to me about his business,
and finds an opportunity to say very softly to me, 'Come away,
my dear, as soon as ever you can.'  I said nothing, but made a
curtsy, as if I had done so to what he said in public. In about
a quarter of an hour I went out too; I had no dress other than
before, except that I had a hood, a mask, a fan, and a pair of
gloves in my pocket; so that there was not the least suspicion
in the house. He waited for me in the coach in a back-lane,
which he knew I must pass by, and had directed the coachman
whither to go, which was to a certain place, called Mile End,
where lived a confidant of his, where we went in, and where
was all the convenience in the world to be as wicked as we
pleased.

When we were together he began to talk very gravely to me,
and to tell me he did not bring me there to betray me; that his
passion for me would not suffer him to abuse me; that he
resolved to marry me as soon as he came to his estate; that in
the meantime, if I would grant his request, he would maintain
me very honourably; and made me a thousand protestations
of his sincerity and of his affection to me; and that he would
never abandon me, and as I may say, made a thousand more
preambles than he need to have done.

However, as he pressed me to speak, I told him I had no
reason to question the sincerity of his love to me after so many
protestations, but--and there I stopped, as if I left him to
guess the rest. 'But what, my dear?' says he. 'I guess what
you mean: what if you should be with child? Is not that it?
Why, then,' says he, 'I'll take care of you and provide for you,
and the child too; and that you may see I am not in jest,' says
he, 'here's an earnest for you,' and with that he pulls out a silk
purse, with an hundred guineas in it, and gave it me. 'And I'll
give you such another,' says he, 'every year till I marry you.'

My colour came and went, at the sight of the purse and with
the fire of his proposal together, so that I could not say a word,
and he easily perceived it; so putting the purse into my bosom,
I made no more resistance to him, but let him do just what he
pleased, and as often as he pleased; and thus I finished my
own destruction at once, for from this day, being forsaken of
my virtue and my modesty, I had nothing of value left to
recommend me, either to God's blessing or man's assistance.

But things did not end here. I went back to the town, did the
business he publicly directed me to, and was at home before
anybody thought me long. As for my gentleman, he stayed
out, as he told me he would, till late at night, and there was
not the least suspicion in the family either on his account or
on mine.

We had, after this, frequent opportunities to repeat our crime
--chiefly by his contrivance--especially at home, when his
mother and the young ladies went abroad a-visiting, which he
watched so narrowly as never to miss; knowing always
beforehand when they went out, and then failed not to catch
me all alone, and securely enough; so that we took our fill of
our wicked pleasure for near half a year; and yet, which was
the most to my satisfaction, I was not with child.

But before this half-year was expired, his younger brother, of
whom I have made some mention in the beginning of the story,
falls to work with me; and he, finding me along in the garden
one evening, begins a story of the same kind to me, made
good honest professions of being in love with me, and in short,
proposes fairly and honourably to marry me, and that before
he made any other offer to me at all.

I was now confounded, and driven to such an extremity as
the like was never known; at least not to me. I resisted the
proposal with obstinacy; and now I began to arm myself with
arguments. I laid before him the inequality of the match; the
treatment I should meet with in the family; the ingratitude it
would be to his good father and mother, who had taken me
into their house upon such generous principles, and when I
was in such a low condition; and, in short, I said everything
to dissuade him from his design that I could imagine, except
telling him the truth, which would indeed have put an end to
It all, but that I durst not think of mentioning.

But here happened a circumstance that I did not expect
indeed, which put me to my shifts; for this young gentleman,
as he was plain and honest, so he pretended to nothing with
me but what was so too; and, knowing his own innocence, he
was not so careful to make his having a kindness for Mrs. Betty
a secret I the house, as his brother was. And though he did
not let them know that he had talked to me about it, yet he
said enough to let his sisters perceive he loved me, and his
mother saw it too, which, though they took no notice of it to
me, yet they did to him, an immediately I found their carriage
to me altered, more than ever before.

I saw the cloud, though I did not foresee the storm. It was
easy, I say, to see that their carriage to me was altered, and
that it grew worse and worse every day; till at last I got
information among the servants that I should, in a very little
while, be desired to remove.

I was not alarmed at the news, having a full satisfaction that
I should be otherwise provided for; and especially considering
that I had reason every day to expect I should be with child,
and that then I should be obliged to remove without any
pretences for it.

After some time the younger gentleman took an opportunity
to tell me that the kindness he had for me had got vent in the
family. He did not charge me with it, he said, for he know
well enough which way it came out. He told me his plain way
of  talking had been the occasion of it, for that he did not make
his respect for me so much a secret as he might have done,
and the reason was, that he was at a point, that if I would
consent to have him, he would tell them all openly that he
loved me, and that he intended to marry me; that it was true
his father and mother might resent it, and be unkind, but that
he was now in a way to live, being bred to the law, and he did
not fear maintaining me agreeable to what I should expect;
and that, in short, as he believed I would not be ashamed of
him, so he was resolved not to be ashamed of me, and that he
scorned to be afraid to own me now, whom he resolved to
own after I was his wife, and therefore I had nothing to do but
to give him my hand, and he would answer for all the rest.

I was now in a dreadful condition indeed, and now I repented
heartily my easiness with the eldest brother; not from any
reflection of conscience, but from a view of the happiness I
might have enjoyed, and had now made impossible; for though
I had no great scruples of conscience, as I have said, to struggle
with, yet I could not think of being a whore to one brother and
a wife to the other. But then it came into my thoughts that the
first brother had promised to made me his wife when he came
to his estate; but I presently remembered what I had often
thought of, that he had never spoken a word of having me for
a wife after he had conquered me for a mistress; and indeed,
till now, though I said I thought of it often, yet it gave me no
disturbance at all, for as he did not seem in the least to lessen
his affection to me, so neither did he lessen his bounty, though
he had the discretion himself to desire me not to lay out a
penny of what he gave me in clothes, or to make the least show
extraordinary, because it would necessarily give jealousy in
the family, since everybody know I could come at such things
no manner of ordinary way, but by some private friendship,
which they would presently have suspected.

But I was now in a great strait, and knew not what to
do. The main difficulty was this: the younger brother not
only laid close siege to me, but suffered it to be seen. He
would come into his sister's room, and his mother's room,
and sit down, and talk a thousand kind things of me, and to
me, even before their faces, and when they were all there.
This grew so public that the whole house talked of it, and his
mother reproved him for it, and their carriage to me appeared
quite altered. In short, his mother had let fall some speeches,
as if she intended to put me out of the family; that is, in
English, to turn me out of doors. Now I was sure this could
not be a secret to his brother, only that he might not think, as
indeed nobody else yet did, that the youngest brother had made
any proposal to me about it; but as I easily could see that it
would go farther, so I saw likewise there was an absolute
necessity to speak of it to him, or that he would speak of it to
me, and which to do first I knew not; that is, whether I should
break it to him or let it alone till he should break it to me.

Upon serious consideration, for indeed now I began to consider
things very seriously, and never till now; I say, upon serious
consideration, I resolved to tell him of it first; and it was not
long before I had an opportunity, for the very next day his
brother went to London upon some business, and the family
being out a-visiting, just as it had happened before, and as
indeed was often the case, he came according to his custom,
to spend an hour or two with Mrs. Betty.

When he came had had sat down a while, he easily perceived
there was an alteration in my countenance, that I was not so
free and pleasant with him as I used to be, and particularly,
that I had been a-crying; he was not long before he took notice
of it, and asked me in very kind terms what was the matter,
and if  anything troubled me. I would have put it off if I could,
but it was not to be concealed; so after suffering many
importunities to draw that out of me which I longed as much
as possible to disclose, I told him that it was true something
did trouble me, and something of such a nature that I could
not conceal from him, and yet that I could not tell how to tell
him of it neither; that it was a thing that not only surprised me,
but greatly perplexed me, and that I knew not what course to
take, unless he would direct me. He told me with great
tenderness, that let it be what it would, I should not let it
trouble me, for he would protect me from all the world.

I then began at a distance, and told him I was afraid the ladies
had got some secret information of our correspondence; for
that it was easy to see that their conduct was very much
changed towards me for a great while, and that now it was
come to that pass that they frequently found fault with me,
and sometimes fell quite out with me, though I never gave
them the least occasion; that whereas I used always to lie
with the eldest sister, I was lately put to lie by myself, or with
one of the maids; and that I had overheard them several times
talking very unkindly about me; but that which confirmed it
all was, that one of the servants had told me that she had heard
I  was to be turned out, and that it was not safe for the family
that I should be any longer in the house.

He smiled when he herd all this, and I asked him how he
could make so light of it, when he must needs know that if
there was any discovery I was undone for ever, and that even
it would hurt him, though not ruin him as it would me. I
upbraided him, that he was like all the rest of the sex, that,
when they had the character and honour of a woman at their
mercy, oftentimes made it their jest, and at least looked upon
it as a trifle, and counted the ruin of those they had had their
will of as a thing of no value.

He saw me warm and serious, and he changed his style
immediately; he told me he was sorry I should have such a
thought of him; that he had never given me the least occasion
for it, but had been as tender of my reputation as he could be
of his own; that he was sure our correspondence had been
managed with so much address, that not one creature in the
family had so much as a suspicion of it; that if he smiled when
I told him my thoughts, it was at the assurance he lately
received, that our understanding one another was not so much
as known or guessed at; and that when he had told me how
much reason he had to be easy, I should smile as he did, for
he was very certain it would give me a full satisfaction.

'This is a mystery I cannot understand,' says I, 'or how it
should be to my satisfaction that I am to be turned out of
doors; for if our correspondence is not discovered, I know
not what else I have done to change the countenances of the
whole family to me, or to have them treat me as they do now,
who formerly used me with so much tenderness, as if I had
been one of their own children.'

'Why, look you, child,' says he, 'that they are uneasy about
you, that is true; but that they have the least suspicion of the
case as it is, and as it respects you and I, is so far from being
true, that they suspect my brother Robin; and, in short, they
are fully persuaded he makes love to you; nay, the fool has
put it into their heads too himself, for he is continually bantering
them about it, and making a jest of himself. I confess I think
he is wrong to do so, because he cannot but see it vexes them,
and makes them unkind to you; but 'tis a satisfaction to me,
because of the assurance it gives me, that they do not suspect
me in the least, and I hope this will be to your satisfaction too.'

'So it is,' says I, 'one way; but this does not reach my case at
all, nor is this the chief thing that troubles me, though I have
been concerned about that too.'  'What is it, then?' says he.
With which I fell to tears, and could say nothing to him at all.
He strove to pacify me all he could, but began at last to be
very pressing upon me to tell what it was. At last I answered
that I thought I ought to tell him too, and that he had some
right to know it; besides, that I wanted his direction in the case,
for I was in such perplexity that I knew not what course to take,
and then I related the whole affair to him. I told him how
imprudently his brother had managed himself, in making
himself so public; for that if he had kept it a secret, as such a
thing out to have been, I could but have denied him positively,
without giving any reason for it, and he would in time have
ceased his solicitations; but that he had the vanity, first, to
depend upon it that I would not deny him, and then had taken
the freedom to tell his resolution of having me to the whole house.

I told him how far I had resisted him, and told him how sincere
and honourable his offers were. 'But,' says I, 'my case will
be doubly hard; for as they carry it ill to me now, because he
desires to have me, they'll carry it worse when they shall find
I have denied him; and they will presently say, there's something
else in it, and then out it comes that I am married already to
somebody else, or that I would never refuse a match so much
above me as this was.'

This discourse surprised him indeed very much. He told me
that it was a critical point indeed for me to manage, and he
did not see which way I should get out of it; but he would
consider it, and let me know next time we met, what resolution
he was come to about it; and in the meantime desired I would
not give my consent to his brother, nor yet give him a flat
denial, but that I would hold him in suspense a while.

I seemed to start at his saying I should not give him my
consent. I told him he knew very well I had no consent to
give; that he had engaged himself to marry me, and that my
consent was the same time engaged to him; that he had all
along told me I was his wife, and I looked upon myself as
effectually so as if the ceremony had passed; and that it was
from his own mouth that I did so, he having all along persuaded
me to call myself his wife.

'Well, my dear,' says he, 'don't be concerned at that now;
if I am not your husband, I'll be as good as a husband to you;
and do not let those things trouble you now, but let me look
a little farther into this affair, and I shall be able to say more
next time we meet.'

He pacified me as well as he could with this, but I found he
was very thoughtful, and that though he was very kind to me
and  kissed me a thousand times, and more I believe, and gave
me money too, yet he offered no more all the while we were
together, which was above two hours, and which I much
wondered at indeed at that time, considering how it used to be,
and what opportunity we had.

His brother did not come from London for five or six days,
and it was two days more before he got an opportunity to talk
with him; but then getting him by himself he began to talk
very close to him about it, and the same evening got an
opportunity (for we had a long conference together) to repeat
all their discourse to me, which, as near as I can remember,
was to the purpose following. He told him he heard strange
news of him since he went, viz. that he made love to Mrs.
Betty. 'Well, says his brother a little angrily, 'and so I do.
And what then? What has anybody to do with that?'  'Nay,'
says his brother, 'don't be angry, Robin; I don't pretend to
have anything to do with it; nor do I pretend to be angry with
you about it. But I find they do concern themselves about it,
and that they have used the poor girl ill about it, which I should
take as done to myself.'  'Whom do you mean by THEY?'
says Robin. 'I mean my mother and the girls,' says the elder
brother. 'But hark ye,' says his brother, 'are you in earnest?
Do you really love this girl? You may be free with me, you
know.'  'Why, then,' says Robin, 'I will be free with you; I do
love her above all the women in the world, and I will have her,
let them say and do what they will. I believe the girl will not
deny me.'

It struck me to the heart when he told me this, for though
it was most rational to think I would not deny him, yet I knew
in my own conscience I must deny him, and I saw my ruin in
my being obliged to do so; but I knew it was my business to
talk otherwise then, so I interrupted him in his story thus.

'Ay!,' said I, 'does he think I cannot deny him? But he shall
find I can deny him, for all that.'

'Well, my dear,' says he, 'but let me give you the whole story
as it went on between us, and then say what you will.'

Then he went on and told me that he replied thus: 'But,
brother, you know she has nothing, and you may have several
ladies with good fortunes.'

''Tis no matter for that,' said Robin; 'I love the girl, and I will
never please my pocket in marrying, and not please my fancy.'  
'And so, my dear,' adds he, 'there is no opposing him.'

'Yes, yes,' says I, 'you shall see I can oppose him; I have
learnt to say No, now though I had not learnt it before; if the
best lord in the land offered me marriage now, I could very
cheerfully say No to him.'

'Well, but, my dear,' says he, 'what can you say to him? You
know, as you said when we talked of it before, he well ask
you many questions about it, and all the house will wonder
what the meaning of it should be.'

'Why,' says I, smiling, 'I can stop all their mouths at one clap
by telling him, and them too, that I am married already to his
elder brother.'

He smiled a little too at the word, but I could see it startled
him, and he could not hide the disorder it put him into.
However, he returned, 'Why, though that may be true in some
sense, yet I suppose you are but in jest when you talk of
giving such an answer as that; it may not be convenient on
many accounts.'

'No, no,' says I pleasantly, 'I am not so fond of letting the
secret come out without your consent.'

'But what, then, can you say to him, or to them,' says he,
'when they find you positive against a match which would
be apparently so much to your advantage?'

'Why,' says I, 'should I be at a loss? First of all, I am not
obliged to give me any reason at all; on the other hand, I may
tell them I am married already, and stop there, and that will
be a full stop too to him, for he can have no reason to ask one
question after it.'

'Ay,' says he; 'but the whole house will tease you about that,
even to father and mother, and if you deny them positively,
they will be disobliged at you, and suspicious besides.'

'Why,' says I, 'what can I do? What would have me do? I
was in straight enough before, and as I told you, I was in
perplexity before, and acquainted you with the circumstances,
that I might have your advice.'

'My dear,' says he, 'I have been considering very much upon
it, you may be sure, and though it is a piece of advice that has
a great many mortifications in it to me, and may at first seem
strange to you, yet, all things considered, I see no better way
for you than to let him go on; and if you find him hearty and
in earnest, marry him.'

I gave him a look full of horror at those words, and, turning
pale as death, was at the very point of sinking down out of the
chair I sat in; when, giving a start, 'My dear,' says he aloud,
'what's the matter with you? Where are you a-going?' and a
great many such things; and with jogging and called to me,
fetched me a little to myself, though it was a good while before
I fully recovered my senses, and was not able to speak for
several minutes more.

When I was fully recovered he began again. 'My dear,' says
he, 'what made you so surprised at what I said? I would have
you consider seriously of it? You may see plainly how the
family stand in this case, and they would be stark mad if it
was my case, as it is my brother's; and for aught I see, it
would be my ruin and yours too.'

'Ay!' says I, still speaking angrily; 'are all your protestations
and vows to be shaken by the dislike of the family? Did I not
always object that to you, and you made light thing of it, as
what you were above, and would value; and is it come to
this now?' said I. 'Is this your faith and honour, your love,
and the solidity of your promises?'

He continued perfectly calm, notwithstanding all my reproaches,
and I was not sparing of them at all; but he replied at last,
'My dear, I have not broken one promise with you yet; I did
tell you I would marry you when I was come to my estate; but
you see my father is a hale, healthy man, and may live these
thirty years still, and not be older than several are round us in
town; and you never proposed my marrying you sooner,
because you knew it might be my ruin; and as to all the rest, I
have not failed you in anything, you have wanted for nothing.'

I could not deny a word of this, and had nothing to say to it
in general. 'But why, then,' says I, 'can you persuade me to
such a horrid step as leaving you, since you have not left me?
Will you allow no affection, no love on my side, where there
has been so much on your side? Have I made you no returns?
Have I given no testimony of my sincerity and of my passion?
Are the sacrifices I have made of honour and modesty to you
no proof of my being tied to you in bonds too strong to be
broken?'

'But here, my dear,' says he, 'you may come into a safe station,
and appear with honour and with splendour at once, and the
remembrance of what we have done may be wrapt up in an
eternal silence, as if it had never happened; you shall always
have my respect, and my sincere affection, only then it shall
be honest, and perfectly just to my brother; you shall be my
dear sister, asnow you are my dear----' and there he stopped.

'Your dear whore,' says I, 'you would have said if you had
gone on, and you might as well have said it; but I understand
you. However, I desire you to remember the long discourses
you have had with me, and the many hours' pains you have
taken to persuade me to believe myself an honest woman;
that I was your wife intentionally, though not in the eyes of
the world, and that it was as effectual a marriage that had
passed between us as is we had been publicly wedded by the
parson of the parish. You know and cannot but remember
that these have been your own words to me.'

I found this was a little too close upon him, but I made it up
in what follows. He stood stock-still for a while and said
nothing, and I went on thus: 'You cannot,' says I, 'without
the highest injustice, believe that I yielded upon all these
persuasions without a love not to be questioned, not to be
shaken again by anything that could happen afterward. If you
have such dishonourable thoughts of me, I must ask you what
foundation in any of my behaviour have I given for such a
suggestion?

'If, then, I have yielded to the importunities of my affection,
and if I have been persuaded to believe that I am really, and
in the essence of the thing, your wife, shall I now give the lie
to all those arguments and call myself your whore, or mistress,
which is the same thing? And will you transfer me to your
brother? Canyou transfer my affection? Can you bid me
cease loving you, and bid me love him? It is in my power,
think you, to make such a change at demand? No, sir,' said I,
'depend upon it 'tis impossible, and whatever the change of
your side may be, I will ever be true; and I had much rather,
since it is come that unhappy length, be your whore than your
brother's wife.'

He appeared pleased and touched with the impression of this
last discourse, and told me that he stood where he did before;
that he had not been unfaithful to me in any one promise he
had ever made yet, but that there were so many terrible things
presented themselves to his view in the affair before me, and
that on my account in particular, that he had thought of the
other as a remedy so effectual as nothing could come up to it.
That he thought this would not be entire parting us, but we
might love as friends all our days, and perhaps with more
satisfaction than we should in the station we were now in,
as things might happen; that he durst say, I could not apprehend
anything from him as to betraying a secret, which could not
but be the destruction of us both, if it came out; that he had
but one question to ask of me that could lie in the way of it,
and if that question was answered in the negative, he could
not but think still it was the only step I could take.

I guessed at his question presently, namely, whether I was
sure I was not with child? As to that, I told him he need not
be concerned about it, for I was not with child. 'Why, then,
my dear,' says he, 'we have no time to talk further now.
Consider of it, and think closely about it; I cannot but be of
the opinion still, that it will be the best course you can take.'  
And with this he took his leave, and the more hastily too, his
mother and sisters ringing at the gate, just at the moment that
he had risen up to go.

He left me in the utmost confusion of  thought; and he easily
perceived it the next day, and all the rest of the week, for it
was but Tuesday evening when we talked; but he had no
opportunity to come at me all that week, till the Sunday after,
when I, being indisposed, did not go to church, and he, making
some excuse for the like, stayed at home.

And now he had me an hour and a half again by myself, and
we fell into the same arguments all over again, or at least so
near the same, as it would be to no purpose to repeat them.
At last I asked him warmly, what opinion he must have of my
modesty, that he could suppose I should so much as entertain
a thought of lying with two brothers, and assured him it could
never be. I added, if he was to tell me that he would never
see me more, than which nothing but death could be more
terrible, yet I could never entertain a thought so dishonourable
to myself, and so base to him; and therefore, I entreated him,
if he had one grain of respect or affection left for me, that he
would speak no more of it to me, or that he would pull his
sword out and kill me. He appeared surprised at my obstinacy,
as he called it; told me I was unkind to myself, and unkind to
him in it; that it was a crisis unlooked for upon us both, and
impossible for either of us to foresee, but that he did not see
any other way to save us both from ruin, and therefore he
thought it the more unkind; but that if he must say no more
of it to me, he added with an unusual coldness, that he did
not know anything else we had to talk of; and so he rose up to
take his leave. I rose up too, as if with the same indifference;
but when he came to give me as it were a parting kiss, I burst
out into such a passion of crying, that though I would have spoke,
I could not, and only pressing his hand, seemed to give him the
adieu, but cried vehemently.

He was sensibly moved with this; so he sat down again, and
said a great many kind things to me, to abate the excess of my
passion, but still urged the necessity of what he had proposed;  
all the while insisting, that if I did refuse, he would notwith-
standing provide for me; but letting me plainly see that he
would decline me in the main point--nay, even as a mistress;
making it a point of honour not to lie with the woman that,
for aught he knew, might come to be his brother's wife.

The bare loss of him as a gallant was not so much my affliction
as the loss of his person, whom indeed I loved to distraction;
and the loss of all the expectations I had, and which I always
had built my hopes upon, of having him one day for my
husband. These things oppressed my mind so much, that, in
short, I fell very ill; the agonies of my mind, in a word, threw
me into a high fever, and long it was, that none in the family
expected my life.

I was reduced very low indeed, and was often delirious and
light-headed; but nothing lay so near me as the fear that, when
I was light-headed, I should say something or other to his
prejudice. I was distressed in my mind also to see him, and
so he was to see me, for he really loved me most passionately;
but it could not be; there was not the least room to desire it
on one side or other, or so much as to make it decent.

It was near five weeks that I kept my bed and though the
violence of my fever abated in three weeks, yet it several
times returned; and the physicians said two or three times,
they could do no more for me, but that they must leave nature
and the distemper to fight it out, only strengthening the first
with cordials to maintain the struggle. After the end of five
weeks I grew better, but was so weak, so altered, so melancholy,
and recovered so slowly, that they physicians apprehended I
should go into a consumption; and which vexed me most,
they gave it as their opinion that my mind was oppressed,
that something troubled me, and, in short, that I was in love.
Upon this, the whole house was set upon me to examine me,
and to press me to tell whether I was in love or not, and with
whom; but as I well might, I denied my being in love at all.

They had on this occasion a squabble one day about me at  
table, that had like to have put the whole family in an uproar,
and for some time did so. They happened to be all at table but
the father; as for me, I was ill, and in my chamber. At the
beginning of the talk, which was just as they had finished
their dinner, the old gentlewoman, who had sent me somewhat
to eat, called her maid to go up and ask me if I would have any
more; but the maid brought down word I had not eaten half
what she had sent me already.

'Alas, says the old lady, 'that poor girl! I am afraid she will
never be well.'

'Well!' says the elder brother, 'how should Mrs. Betty be well?
They say she is in love.'

'I believe nothing of it,' says the old gentlewoman.

'I don't know,' says the eldest sister, 'what to say to it;
they have made such a rout about her being so handsome, and
so charming, and I know not what, and that in her hearing too,
that has turned the creature's head, I believe, and who knows
what possessions may follow such doings? For my part, I
don't know what to make of it.'

'Why, sister, you must acknowledge she is very handsome,'
says the elder brother.'

'Ay, and a great deal handsomer than you, sister,' says Robin,
'and that's your mortification.'

'Well, well, that is not the question,' says his sister; 'that girl
is well enough, and she knows it well enough; she need not
be told of it to make her vain.'

'We are not talking of her being vain,' says the elder brother,
'but of her being in love; it may be she is in love with herself;
it seems my sisters think so.'

'I would she was in love with me,' says Robin; 'I'd quickly
put her out of her pain.'

'What d'ye mean by that, son,' says the old lady; 'how can
you talk so?'

'Why, madam,' says Robin, again, very honestly, 'do you
think I'd let the poor girl die for love, and of one that is near
at hand to be had, too?'

'Fie, brother!', says the second sister, 'how can you talk so?
Would you take a creature that has not a groat in the world?'

'Prithee, child,' says Robin, 'beauty's a portion, and good-
humour with it is a double portion; I wish thou hadst half her
stock of both for thy portion.'  So there was her mouth stopped.

'I find,' says the eldest sister, 'if Betty is not in love, my
brother is. I wonder he has not broke his mind to Betty; I
warrant she won't say No.'

'They that yield when they're asked,' says Robin, 'are one
step before them that were never asked to yield, sister, and
two steps before them that yield before they are asked; and
that's an answer to you, sister.'

This fired the sister, and she flew into a passion, and said,
things were some to that pass that it was time the wench,
meaning me, was out of the family; and but that she was not
fit to be turned out, she hoped her father and mother would
consider of it as soon as she could be removed.

Robin replied, that was business for the master and mistress
of the family, who where not to be taught by one that had so
little judgment as his eldest sister.

It ran up a great deal farther; the sister scolded, Robin rallied
and bantered, but poor Betty lost ground by it extremely in
the family. I heard of it, and I cried heartily, and the old lady
came up to me, somebody having told her that I was so much
concerned about it. I complained to her, that it was very hard
the doctors should pass such a censure upon me, for which
they had no ground; and that it was still harder, considering
the circumstances I was under in the family; that I hoped I
had done nothing to lessen her esteem for me, or given any
occasion for the bickering between her sons and daughters,
and I had more need to think of a coffin than of being in love,
and begged she would not let me suffer in her opinion for
anybody's mistakes but my own.

She was sensible of the justice of what I said, but told me,
since there had been such a clamour among them, and that her
younger son talked after such a rattling way as he did, she
desired I would be so faithful to her as to answer her but one
question sincerely. I told her I would, with all my heart, and
with the utmost plainness and sincerity. Why, then, the
question was, whether there way anything between her son
Robert and me. I told her with all the protestations of sincerity
that I was able to make, and as I might well, do, that there was
not, nor every had been; I told her that Mr. Robert had rattled
and jested, as she knew it was his way, and that I took it always,
as I supposed he meant it, to be a wild airy way of discourse
that had no signification in it; and again assured her, that there
was not the least tittle of what she understood by it between
us; and that those who had suggested it had done me a great
deal of wrong, and Mr. Robert no service at all.

The old lady was fully satisfied, and kissed me, spoke
cheerfully to me, and bid me take care of my health and want
for nothing, and so took her leave. But when she came down
she found the brother and all his sisters together by the ears;
they were angry, even to passion, at his upbraiding them with
their being homely, and having never had any sweethearts,
never having been asked the question, and their being so
forward as almost to ask first. He rallied them upon the
subject of Mrs. Betty; how pretty, how good-humoured, how
she sung better then they did, and danced better, and how
much handsomer she was; and in doing this he omitted no
ill-natured thing that could vex them, and indeed, pushed too
hard upon them. The old lady came down in the height of it,
and to put a stop it to, told them all the discourse she had had
with me, and how I answered, that there was nothing between
Mr. Robert and I.

'She's wrong there,' says Robin, 'for if there was not a great
deal between us, we should be closer together than we are.
I told her I lover her hugely,' says he, 'but I could never make
the jade believe I was in earnest.'  'I do not know how you
should,' says his mother; 'nobody in their senses could believe
you were in earnest, to talk so to a poor girl, whose circumstances
you know so well.

'But prithee, son,' adds she, 'since you tell me that you could
not make her believe you were in earnest, what must we
believe about it? For you ramble so in your discourse, that
nobody knows whether you are in earnest or in jest; but as I
find the girl, by your own confession, has answered truly, I
wish you would do so too, and tell me seriously, so that I may
depend upon it. Is there anything in it or no? Are you in
earnest or no? Are you distracted, indeed, or are you not?
'Tis a weighty question, and I wish you would make us easy
about it.'

'By my faith, madam,' says Robin, ''tis in vain to mince the
matter or tell any more lies about it; I am in earnest, as much
as a man is that's going to be hanged. If Mrs. Betty would
say she loved me, and that she would marry me, I'd have her
tomorrow morning fasting, and say, 'To have and to hold,'
instead of eating my breakfast.'

'Well,' says the mother, 'then there's one son lost'; and she
said it in a very mournful tone, as one greatly concerned at it.

'I hope not, madam,' says Robin; 'no man is lost when a good
wife has found him.'

'Why, but, child,' says the old lady, 'she is a beggar.'

'Why, then, madam, she has the more need of charity,' says
Robin; 'I'll take her off the hands of the parish, and she and
I'll beg together.'

'It's bad jesting with such things,' says the mother.

'I don't jest, madam,' says Robin. 'We'll come and beg your
pardon, madam; and your blessing, madam, and my father's.'

'This is all out of the way, son,' says the mother. 'If you are
in earnest you are undone.'

'I am afraid not,' says he, 'for I am really afraid she won't
have me; after all my sister's huffing and blustering, I believe
I shall never be able to persuade her to it.'

'That's a fine tale, indeed; she is not so far out of her senses
neither. Mrs. Betty is no fool,' says the younger sister. 'Do
you think she has learnt to say No, any more than other people?'

'No, Mrs. Mirth-wit,' says Robin, 'Mrs. Betty's no fool; but
Mrs. Betty may be engaged some other way, and what then?'

'Nay,' says the eldest sister, 'we can say nothing to that. Who
must it be to, then? She is never out of the doors; it must be
between you.'

'I have nothing to say to that,' says Robin. 'I have been
examined enough; there's my brother. If it must be between
us, go to work with him.'

This stung the elder brother to the quick, and he concluded
that Robin had discovered something. However, he kept
himself from appearing disturbed. 'Prithee,' says he, 'don't
go to shame your stories off upon me; I tell you, I deal in no
such ware; I have nothing to say to Mrs. Betty, nor to any of
the Mrs. Bettys in the parish'; and with that he rose up and
brushed off.

'No,' says the eldest sister, 'I dare answer for my brother; he
knows the world better.'

Thus the discourse ended, but it left the elder brother quite
confounded. He concluded his brother had made a full
discovery, and he began to doubt whether I had been concerned
in it or not; but with all his management he could not bring
it about to get at me. At last he was so perplexed that he was
quite desperate, and resolved he would come into my chamber
and see me, whatever came of it. In order to do this, he
contrived it so, that one day after dinner, watching his eldest
sister till he could see her go upstairs, he runs after her. 'Hark
ye, sister,' says he, 'where is this sick woman? May not a
body see her?'  'Yes,' says the sister, 'I believe you may; but
let me go first a little, and I'll tell you.'  So she ran up to the
door and gave me notice, and presently called to him again.
'Brother,' says she, 'you may come if you please.'  So in he
came, just in the same kind of rant. 'Well,' says he at the door
as he came in, 'where is this sick body that's in love? How
do ye do, Mrs. Betty?'  I would have got up out of my chair,
but was so weak I could not for a good while; and he saw it,
and his sister to, and she said, 'Come, do not strive to stand
up; my brother desires no ceremony, especially now you are
so weak.'  'No, no, Mrs. Betty, pray sit still,' says he, and so
sits himself down in a chair over against me, and appeared as
if he was mighty merry.

He talked a lot of rambling stuff to his sister and to me,
sometimes of one thing, sometimes of another, on purpose
to amuse his sister, and every now and then would turn it
upon the old story, directing it to me. 'Poor Mrs. Betty,' says
he, 'it is a sad thing to be in love; why, it has reduced you
sadly.'  At last I spoke a little. 'I am glad to see you so merry,
sir,' says I; 'but I think the doctor might have found something
better to do than to make his game at his patients. If I had
been ill of no other distemper, I know the proverb too well to
have let him come to me.'  'What proverb?' says he, 'Oh! I
remember it now. What--
     "Where love is the case,
     The doctor's an ass."

Is not that it, Mrs. Betty?'  I smiled and said nothing. 'Nay,'
says he, 'I think the effect has proved it to be love, for it
seems the doctor has been able to do you but little service;
you mend very slowly, they say. I doubt there's somewhat in
it, Mrs. Betty; I doubt you are sick of the incurables, and that
is love.'  I smiled and said, 'No, indeed, sir, that's none of my
distemper.'

We had a deal of such discourse, and sometimes others that
signified as little. By and by he asked me to sing them a song,
at which I smiled, and said my singing days were over. At last
he asked me if he should play upon his flute to me; his sister
said she believe it would hurt me, and that my head could
not bear it. I bowed, and said, No, it would not hurt me.
'And, pray, madam.' said I, 'do not hinder it; I love the music
of the flute very much.'  Then his sister said, 'Well, do, then,
brother.'  With that he pulled out the key of his closet. 'Dear
sister,' says he, 'I am very lazy; do step to my closet and fetch
my flute; it lies in such a drawer,' naming a place where he
was sure it was not, that she might be a little while a-looking
for it.

As soon as she was gone, he related the whole story to me
of the discourse his brother had about me, and of his pushing
it at him, and his concern about it, which was the reason of
his contriving this visit to me. I assured him I had never
opened my mouth either to his brother or to anybody else.
I told him the dreadful exigence I was in; that my love to him,
and his offering to have me forget that affection and remove
it to another, had thrown me down; and that I had a thousand
times wished I might die rather than recover, and to have the
same circumstances to struggle with as I had before, and that
his backwardness to life had been the great reason of the
slowness of my recovering. I added that I foresaw that as soon
as I was well, I must quit the family, and that as for marrying
his brother, I abhorred the thoughts of it after what had been
my case with him, and that he might depend upon it I would
never see his brother again upon that subject; that if he would
break all his vows and oaths and engagements with me, be
that between his conscience and his honour and himself; but
he should never be able to say that I, whom he had persuaded
to call myself his wife, and who had given him the liberty to
use me as a wife, was not as faithful to him as a wife ought to
be, whatever he might be to me.

He was going to reply, and had said that he was sorry I could
not be persuaded, and was a-going to say more, but he heard
his sister a-coming, and so did I; and yet I forced out these
few words as a reply, that I could never be persuaded to love
one brother and marry another. He shook his head and said,
'Then I am ruined,' meaning himself; and that moment his
sister entered the room and told him she could not find the
flute. 'Well,' says he merrily, 'this laziness won't do'; so he
gets up and goes himself to go to look for it, but comes back
without it too; not but that he could have found it, but because
his mind was a little disturbed, and he had no mind to play;
and, besides, the errand he sent his sister on was answered
another way; for he only wanted an opportunity to speak to
me, which he gained, though not much to his satisfaction.

I had, however, a great deal of satisfaction in having spoken
my mind to him with freedom, and with such an honest
plainness, as I have related; and though it did not at all work
the way I desired, that is to say, to oblige the person to me
the more, yet it took from him all possibility of quitting me
but by a downright breach of honour, and giving up all the
faith of a gentleman to me, which he had so often engaged by,
never to abandon me, but to make me his wife as soon as he
came to his estate.

It was not many weeks after this before I was about the house
again, and began to grow well; but I continued melancholy,
silent, dull, and retired, which amazed the whole family, except
he that knew the reason of it; yet it was a great while before
he took any notice of it, and I, as backward to speak as he,
carried respectfully to him, but never offered to speak a word
to him that was particular of any kind whatsoever; and this
continued for sixteen or seventeen weeks; so that, as I expected
every day to be dismissed the family, on account of what
distaste they had taken another way, in which I had no guilt,
so I expected to hear no more of this gentleman, after all his
solemn vows and protestations, but to be ruined and abandoned.

At last I broke the way myself in the family for my removing;
for being talking seriously with the old lady one day, about
my own circumstances in the world, and how my distemper
had left a heaviness upon my spirits, that I was not the same
thing I was before, the old lady said, 'I am afraid, Betty, what
I have said to you about my son has had some influence upon
you, and that you are melancholy on his account; pray, will
you let me know how the matter stands with you both, if it
may not be improper? For, as for Robin, he does nothing but
rally and banter when I speak of it to him.'  'Why, truly,
madam,' said I 'that matter stands as I wish it did not, and I
shall be very sincere with you in it, whatever befalls me for it.
Mr. Robert has several times proposed marriage to me, which
is what I had no reason to expect, my poor circumstances
considered; but I have always resisted him, and that perhaps
in terms more positive than became me, considering the regard
that I ought to have for every branch of your family; but,' said
I, 'madam, I could never so far forget my obligation to you
and all your house, to offer to consent to a thing which I know
must needs be disobliging to you, and this I have made my
argument to him, and have positively told him that I would
never entertain a though of that kind unless I had your consent,
and his father's also, to whom I was bound by so many
invincible obligations.'

'And is this possible, Mrs. Betty?' says the old lady. 'Then
you have been much juster to us than we have been to you;
for we have all looked upon you as a kind of snare to my son,
and I had a proposal to make to you for your removing, for
fear of it; but I had not yet mentioned it to you, because I
thought you were not thorough well, and I was afraid of
grieving you too much, lest it should throw you down again;
for we have all a respect for you still, though not so much as
to have it be the ruin of my son; but if it be as you say, we have
all wronged you very much.'

'As to the truth of what I say, madam,' said I, 'refer you to
your son himself; if he will do me any justice, he must tell you
the story just as I have told it.'

Away goes the old lady to her daughters and tells them the
whole story, just as I had told it her; and they were surprised
at it, you may be sure, as I believed they would be. One said
she could never have thought it; another said Robin was a fool;
a third said she would not believe a word of it, and she would
warrant that Robin would tell the story another way. But the
old gentlewoman, who was resolved to go to the bottom of it
before I could have the least opportunity of acquainting her
son with what had passed, resolved too that she would talk
with her son immediately, and to that purpose sent for him,
for he was gone but to a lawyer's house in the town, upon
some petty business of his own, and upon her sending he
returned immediately.

Upon his coming up to them, for they were all still together,
'Sit down, Robin,' says the old lady, 'I must have some talk
with you.'  'With all my heart, madam,' says Robin, looking
very merry. 'I hope it is about a good wife, for I am at a great
loss in that affair.'  'How can that be?' says his mother; 'did
not you say you resolved to have Mrs. Betty?'  'Ay, madam,'
says Robin, 'but there is one has forbid the banns.'  'Forbid,
the banns!' says his mother; 'who can that be?'  'Even Mrs.
Betty herself,' says Robin. 'How so?' says his mother. 'Have
you asked her the question, then?'  'Yes, indeed, madam,' says
Robin. 'I have attacked her in form five times since she was sick,
and am beaten off; the jade is so stout she won't capitulate nor
yield upon any terms, except such as I cannot effectually grant.'  
'Explain yourself,' says the mother, 'for I am surprised; I do
not understand you. I hope you are not in earnest.'

'Why, madam,' says he, 'the case is plain enough upon me,
it explains itself; she won't have me, she says; is not that plain
enough? I think 'tis plain, and pretty rough too.'  'Well, but,'
says the mother, 'you talk of conditions that you cannot grant;
what does she want--a settlement? Her jointure ought to be
according to her portion; but what fortune does she bring you?'  
'Nay, as to fortune,' says Robin, 'she is rich enough; I am
satisfied in that point; but 'tis I that am not able to come up
to her terms, and she is positive she will not have me without.'

Here the sisters put in. 'Madam,' says the second sister, ''tis
impossible to be serious with him; he will never give a direct
answer to anything; you had better let him alone, and talk no
more of it to him; you know how to dispose of her out of his
way if you thought there was anything in it.'  Robin was a little
warmed with his sister's rudeness, but he was even with her,
and yet with good manners too. 'There are two sorts of people,
madam,' says he, turning to his mother, 'that there is no
contending with; that is, a wise body and a fool; 'tis a little
hard I should engage with both of them together.'

The younger sister then put in. 'We must be fools indeed,'
says she, 'in my brother's opinion, that he should think we can
believe he has seriously asked Mrs. Betty to marry him, and
that she has refused him.'

'Answer, and answer not, say Solomon,' replied her brother.
'When your brother had said to your mother that he had asked
her no less than five times, and that it was so, that she positively
denied him, methinks a younger sister need not question the
truth of it when her mother did not.'  'My mother, you see,
did not understand it,' says the second sister. 'There's some
difference,' says Robin, 'between desiring me to explain it,
and telling me she did not believe it.'

'Well, but, son,' says the old lady, 'if you are disposed to let
us into the mystery of it, what were these hard conditions?'  
'Yes, madam,' says Robin, 'I had done it before now, if the
teasers here had not worried my by way of interruption. The
conditions are, that I bring my father and you to consent to it,
and without that she protests she will never see me more upon
that head; and to these conditions, as I said, I suppose I shall
never be able to grant. I hope my warm sisters will be
answered now, and blush a little; if not, I have no more to say
till I hear further.'

This answer was surprising to them all, though less to the
mother, because of what I had said to her. As to the daughters,
they stood mute a great while; but the mother said with some
passion, 'Well, I had heard this before, but I could not believe
it; but if it is so, they we have all done Betty wrong, and she
has behaved better than I ever expected.'  'Nay,' says the eldest
sister, 'if it be so, she has acted handsomely indeed.'  'I confess,'
saysthe mother, 'it was none of her fault, if he was fool enough
totake a fancy to her; but to give such an answer to him, shows
more respect to your father and me than I can tell how to
express; I shall value the girl the better for it as long as I know
her.'  'But I shall not,' says Robin, 'unless you will give your
consent.' 'I'll consider of that a while,' says the mother; 'I
assure you, if there were not some other objections in the way,
this conduct of hers would go a great way to bring me to
consent.'  'I wish it would go quite through it,' says Robin;
'if you had a much thought about making me easy as you have
about making me rich, you would soon consent to it.'

'Why, Robin,' says the mother again, 'are you really in earnest?
Would you so fain have her as you pretend?'  "Really, madam,'
says Robin, 'I think 'tis hard you should question me upon
that head after all I have said. I won't say that I will have her;
how can I resolve that point, when you see I cannot have her
without your consent? Besides, I am not bound to marry at
all. But this I will say, I am in earnest in, that I will never have
anybody else if I can help it; so you may determine for me.
Betty or nobody is the word, and the question which of the
two shall be in your breast to decide, madam, provided only,
that my good-humoured sisters here may have no vote in it.'

All this was dreadful to me, for the mother began to yield,
and Robin pressed her home on it. On the other hand, she
advised with the eldest son, and he used all the arguments in
the world to persuade her to consent; alleging his brother's
passionate love for me, and my generous regard to the family,
in refusing my own advantages upon such a nice point of
honour, and a thousand such things. And as to the father, he
was a man in a hurry of public affairs and getting money,
seldom at home, thoughtful of the main chance, but left all
those things to his wife.

You may easily believe, that when the plot was thus, as they
thought, broke out, and that every one thought they knew how
things were carried, it was not so difficult or so dangerous for
the elder brother, whom nobody suspected of anything, to have
a freer access to me than before; nay, the mother, which was
just as he wished, proposed it to him to talk with Mrs. Betty.
'For it may be, son,' said she, 'you may see farther into the
thing than I, and see if you think she has been so positive as
Robin says she has been, or no.'  This was as well as he could
wish, and he, as it were, yielding to talk with me at his mother's
request, she brought me to him into her own chamber, told me
her son had some business with me at her request, and desired
me to be very sincere with him, and then she left us together,
and he went and shut the door after her.

He came back to me and took me in his arms, and kissed me
very tenderly; but told me he had a long discourse to hold
with me, and it was not come to that crisis, that I should make
myself happy or miserable as long as I lived; that the thing
was now gone so far, that if I could not comply with his desire,
we would both be ruined. Then he told the whole story
between Robin, as he called him, and his mother and sisters
and himself, as it is above. 'And now, dear child,' says he,
'consider what it will be to marry a gentleman of a good family,
in good circumstances, and with the consent of the whole house,
and to enjoy all that he world can give you; and what, on the
other hand, to be sunk into the dark circumstances of a woman
that has lost her reputation; and that though I shall be a private
friend to you while I live, yet as I shall be suspected always,
so you will be afraid to see me, and I shall be afraid to own you.'

He gave me no time to reply, but went on with me thus: 'What
has happened between us, child, so long as we both agree to do
so, may be buried and forgotten. I shall always be your sincere
friend, without any inclination to nearer intimacy, when you
become my sister; and we shall have all the honest part of  
conversation without any reproaches between us of having  
done amiss. I beg of you to consider it, and to not stand in the
way of your own safety and prosperity; and to satisfy you that
I am sincere,' added he, 'I here offer you #500 in money, to
make you some amends for the freedoms I havetaken with  
you, which we shall look upon as some of the folliesof our
lives,  which 'tis hoped we may repent of.'

He spoke this in so much more moving terms than it is possible
for me to express, and with so much greater force of argument
than I can repeat, that I only recommend it to those who read
the story, to suppose, that as he held me above an hour and a
half in that discourse, so he answered all my objections, and
fortified his discourse with all the arguments that human wit
and art could devise.

I cannot say, however, that anything he said made impression
enough upon me so as to give me any thought of the matter,
till he told me at last very plainly, that if I refused, he was
sorry to add that he could never go on with me in that station
as we stood before; that though he loved me as well as ever,
and that I was as agreeable to him as ever, yet sense of virtue
had not so far forsaken him as to suffer him to lie with a
woman that his brother courted to make his wife; and if he
took his leave of me, with a denial in this affair, whatever he
might do for me in the point of support, grounded on his first
engagement of maintaining me, yet he would not have me be
surprised that he was obliged to tell me he could not allow
himself to see me any more; and that, indeed, I could not
expect it of him.

I received this last part with some token of surprise and
disorder, and had much ado to avoid sinking down, for indeed
I loved him to an extravagance not easy to imagine; but he
perceived my disorder. He entreated me to consider seriously
of it; assured me that it was the only way to preserve our
mutual affection; that in this station we might love as friends,
with the utmost passion, and with a love of relation untainted,
free from our just reproaches, and free from other people's
suspicions; that he should ever acknowledge his happiness
owing to me; that he would be debtor to me as long as he
lived, and would be paying that debt as long as he had breath.
Thus he wrought me up, in short, to a kind of hesitation in the
matter; having the dangers on one side represented in lively
figures, and indeed, heightened by my imagination of being
turned out to the wide world a mere cast-off whore, for it was
no less, and perhaps exposed as such, with little to provide for
myself, with no friend, no acquaintance in the whole world,
out of that town, and there I could not pretend to stay. All
this terrified me to the last degree, and he took care upon all
occasions to lay it home to me in the worst colours that it could
be possible to be drawn in. On the other hand, he failed not to
set forth the easy, prosperous life which I was going to live.

He answered all that I could object from affection, and from
former engagements, with telling me the necessity that was
before us of taking other measures now; and as to his promises
of marriage, the nature of things, he said, had put an end to
that, by the probability of my being his brother's wife, before
the time to which his promises all referred.

Thus, in a word, I may say, he reasoned me out of my reason;
he conquered all my arguments, and I began to see a danger
that I was in, which I had not considered of before, and that
was, of being dropped by both of them and left alone in the
world to shift for myself.

This, and his persuasion, at length prevailed with me to
consent, though with so much reluctance, that it was easy to
see I should go to church like a bear to the stake. I had some
little apprehensions about me, too, lest my new spouse, who,
by the way, I had not the least affection for, should be skillful
enough to challenge me on another account, upon our first
coming to bed together. But whether he did it with design or
not, I know not, but his elder brother took care to make him
very much fuddled before he went to bed, so that I had the
satisfaction of a drunken bedfellow the first night. How he
did it I know not, but I concluded that he certainly contrived
it, that his brother might be able to make no judgment of the
difference between a maid and a married woman; nor did he
ever entertain any notions of it, or disturb his thoughts about it.

I should go back a little here to where I left off. The elder
brother having thus managed me, his next business was to
manage his mother, and he never left till he had brought her
to acquiesce and be passive in the thing, even without
acquainting the father, other than by post letters; so that she
consented to our marrying privately, and leaving her to mange
the father afterwards.

Then he cajoled with his brother, and persuaded him what
service he had done him, and how he had brought his mother
to consent, which, though true, was not indeed done to serve
him, but to serve himself; but thus diligently did he cheat him,
and had the thanks of a faithful friend for shifting off his whore
into his brother's arms for a wife. So certainly does interest
banish all manner of affection, and so naturally do men give
up honour and justice, humanity, and even Christianity, to
secure themselves.

I must now come back to brother Robin, as we always called
him, who having got his mother's consent, as above, came
big with the news to me, and told me the whole story of it,
with a sincerity so visible, that I must confess it grieved me
that I must be the instrument to abuse so honest a gentleman.
But there was no remedy; he would have me, and I was not
obliged to tell him that I was his brother's whore, though I had
no other way to put him off; so I came gradually into it, to his
satisfaction, and behold we were married.

Modesty forbids me to reveal the secrets of the marriage-bed,
but nothing could have happened more suitable to my
circumstances than that, as above, my husband was so fuddled
when he came to bed, that he could not remember in the
morning whether he had had any conversation with me or no,
and I was obliged to tell him he had, though in reality he had
not, that I might be sure he could make to inquiry about
anything else.

It concerns the story in hand very little to enter into the further
particulars of the family, or of myself, for the five years that I
lived with this husband, only to observe that I had two children
by him, and that at the end of five years he died. He had been
really a very good husband to me, and we lived very agreeably
together; but as he had not received much from them, and had
in the little time he lived acquired no great matters, so my
circumstances were not great, nor was I much mended by the
match. Indeed, I had preserved the elder brother's bonds to
me,to pay #500, which he offered me for my consentto marry
his brother; and this, with what I had saved of the moneyhe
formerly gave me, about as much more by my husband, left me
a widow with about #1200 in my pocket.

My two children were, indeed, taken happily off my hands by
my husband's father and mother, and that, by the way, was all
they got by Mrs. Betty.

I confess I was not suitably affected with the loss of my husband,
nor indeed can I say that I ever loved him as I ought to have
done, or as was proportionable to the good usage I had from
him, for he was a tender, kind, good-humoured man as any
woman could desire; but his brother being so always in my
sight, at least while we were in the country, was a continual
snare to me, and I never was in bed with my husband but I
wished myself in the arms of his brother; and though his brother
never offered me the least kindness that way after our marriage,
but carried it just as a brother out to do, yet it was impossible
for me to do so to him; in short, I committed adultery and incest
with him every day in my desires, which, without doubt, was as
effectually criminal in the nature of the guilt as if I had actually
done it.

Before my husband died his elder brother was married, and
we, being then removed to London, were written to by the old
lady to come and be at the wedding. My husband went, but I
pretended indisposition, and that I could not possibly travel,
so I stayed behind; for, in short, I could not bear the sight of
his being given to another woman, though I knew I was never
to have him myself.

I was now, as above, left loose to the world, and being still
young and handsome, as everybody said of me, and I assure
you I thought myself so, and with a tolerable fortune in my
pocket, I put no small value upon myself. I was courted by
several very considerable tradesmen, and particularly very
warmly by one, a linen-draper, at whose house, after my
husband's death, I took a lodging, his sister being my acquaintance.
Here I had all the liberty and all the opportunity to be gay and
appear in company that I could desire, my landlord's sister
being one of the maddest, gayest things alive, and not so much
mistress of her virtue as I thought as first she had been. She
brought me into a world of  wild company, and even brought
home several persons, such as she liked well enough to gratify,
to see her pretty widow, so she was pleased to call me, and
that name I got in a little time in public. Now, as fame and
fools make an assembly, I was here wonderfully caressed, had
abundance of admirers, and such as called themselves lovers;
but I found not one fair proposal among them all. As for their
common design, that I understood too well to be drawn into
any more snares of that kind. The case was altered with me:
I had money in my pocket, and had nothing to say to them. I
had been tricked once by that cheat called love, but the game
was over;  I was resolved now to be married or nothing, and
to be well married or not at all.

I loved the company, indeed, of men of mirth and wit, men of
gallantry and figure, and was often entertained with such, as
I was also with others; but I found by just observation, that the
brightest men came upon the dullest errand--that is to say, the
dullest as to what I aimed at. On the other hand, those who
came with the best proposals were the dullest and most  
disagreeable part of the world. I was not averse to a tradesman,
but then I would have a tradesman, forsooth, that was
something of a gentleman too; that when my husband had a
mind to carry me to the court, or to the play, he might become
a sword, and look as like a gentleman as another man; and not
be one that had the mark of his apron-strings upon his coat,
or the mark of his hat upon his periwig; that should look as if
he was set on to his sword, when his sword was put on to him,
and that carried his trade in his countenance.

Well, at last I found this amphibious creature, this land-water
thing called a gentleman-tradesman; and as a just plague upon
my folly, I was catched in the very snare which, as I might say,
I laid for myself. I said for myself, for I was not trepanned,
I confess, but I betrayed myself.

This was a draper, too, for though my comrade would have
brought me to a bargain with her brother, yet when it came to
the point, it was, it seems, for a mistress, not a wife; and I kept
true to this notion, that a woman should never be kept for a
mistress that had money to keep herself.

Thus my pride, not my principle, my money, not my virtue,
kept me honest; though, as it proved, I found I had much better
have been sold by my she-comrade to her brother, than have
sold myself as I did to a tradesman that was rake, gentleman,
shopkeeper, and beggar, all together.

But I was hurried on (by my fancy to a gentleman) to ruin
myself in the grossest manner that every woman did; for my
new husband coming to a lump of money at once, fell into
such a profusion of expense, that all I had, and all he had
before, if he had anything worth mentioning, would not have
held it out above one year.

He was very fond of me for about a quarter of a year, and
what  I got by that was, that I had the pleasure of seeing a great
deal of my money spent upon myself, and, as I may say, had
some of the spending it too. 'Come, my dear,' says he to me
one day, 'shall we go and take a turn into the country for about
a week?' 'Ay, my dear,' says I, 'whither would you go?'  'I
care not whither,' says he, 'but I have a mind to look like
quality for a week. We'll go to Oxford,' says he. 'How,' says
I, 'shall we go? I am no horsewoman, and 'tis too far for a coach.'
  'Too far!' says he; 'no place is too far for a coach-and-six. If
I carry you out, you shall travel like a duchess.'  'Hum,' says
I, 'my dear, 'tis a frolic; but if you have a mind to it, I don't
care.'  Well, the time was appointed, we had a rich coach, very
good horses, a coachman, postillion, and two footmen in very
good liveries; a gentleman on horseback, and a page with a
feather in his hat upon another horse. The servants all called
him my lord, and the inn-keepers, you may be sure, did the like,
and I was her honour the Countess, and thus we traveled to
Oxford, and a very pleasant journey we had; for, give him his
due, not a beggar alive knew better how to be a lord than my
husband. We saw all the rarities at Oxford, talked with two or
three Fellows of colleges about putting out a young nephew,
that was left to his lordship's care, to the University, and of
their being his tutors. We diverted ourselves with bantering
several other poor scholars, with hopes of being at least his
lordship's chaplains and putting on a scarf; and thus having
lived like quality indeed, as to expense, we went away for
Northampton, and, in a word, in about twelve days' ramble
came home again, to the tune of about #93 expense.

Vanity is the perfection of a fop. My husband had this
excellence, that he valued nothing of expense; and as his
history, you may be sure, has very little weight in it, 'tis
enough to tell you that in about two years and a quarter he
broke, and was not so happy to get over into the Mint, but got
into a sponging-house, being arrested in an action too heavy
from him to give bail to, so he sent for me to come to him.

It was no surprise to me, for I had foreseen some time that
all was going to wreck, and had been taking care to reserve
something if I could, though it was not much, for myself. But
when he sent for me, he behaved much better than I expected,
and told me plainly he had played the fool, and suffered
himself to be surprised, which he might have prevented; that
now he foresaw he could not stand it, and therefore he would
have me go home, and in the night take away everything I had
in the house of any value, and secure it; and after that, he told
me that if I could get away one hundred or two hundred pounds
in goods out of the shop, I should do it; 'only,' sayshe, 'let me
know nothing of it, neither what you take norwhither you
carry it; for as for me,' says he, 'I am resolved toget out of
this house and be gone; and if you never hear of memore, my
dear,' says he, 'I wish you well; I am only sorry forthe injury
I have done you.'  He said some very handsomethings to me
indeed at parting; for I told you he was a gentleman, and that
was all the benefit  I had of his being so; that he used me very
handsomely and with good mannersupon all occasions, even
to the last, only spent all I had, andleft me to rob the creditors
for something to subsist on.

However, I did as he bade me, that you may be sure; and
having thus taken my leave of him, I never saw him more, for
he found means to break out of the bailiff's house that night
or the next, and go over into France, and for the rest of the
creditors scrambled for it as well as they could. How, I knew
not, for I could come at no knowledge of anything, more than
this, that he came home about three o'clock in the morning,
caused the rest of his goods to be removed into the Mint, and
the shop to be shut up; and having raised what money he could
get together, he got over, as I said, to France, from whence I
had one or two letters from him, and no more. I did not see him
when he came home, for he having given me such instructions
as above, and I having made the best of my time, I had no more
business back again at the house, not knowing but I might have
been stopped there by the creditors; for a commission of  
bankrupt being soon after issued, they might have stopped me
by orders from the commissioners. But my husband, having
so dexterously got out of the bailiff's house by letting himself
down in a most desperate manner from almost the top of the
house to the top of another building, and leaping from thence,
which was almost two storeys, and which was enough indeed
to have broken his neck, he came home and got away his goods
before the creditors could come to seize; that is to say, before
they could get out the commission, and be ready to send their
officers to take possession.

My husband was so civil to me, for still I say he was much
of a gentleman, that in the first letter he wrote me from France,
he let me know where he had pawned twenty pieces of fine
holland for #30, which were really worth #90, and enclosed
me the token and an order for the taking them up, paying the
money, which I did, and made in time above #100 of them,
having leisure to cut them and sell them, some and some, to
private families, as opportunity offered.

However, with all this, and all that I had secured before, I
found, upon casting things up, my case was very much altered,
any my fortune much lessened; for, including the hollands and
a parcel of fine muslins, which I carried off before, and some
plate, and other things, I found I could hardly muster up #500;
and my condition was very odd, for though I had no child (I
had had one by my gentleman draper, but it was buried), yet I
was a widow bewitched; I had a husband and no husband, and
I could not pretend to marry again, though I knew well enough
my husband would never see England any more, if he lived fifty
years. Thus, I say, I was limited from marriage, what offer
mightsoever be made me; and I had not one friend to advise
with in the condition I was in, lease not one I durst trust the
secret of my circumstances to, for if the commissioners were
to have been informed where I was, I should have been fetched
up and examined upon oath, and all I have saved be taken aware
from me.

Upon these apprehensions, the first thing I did was to go quite
out of my knowledge, and go by another name. This I did
effectually, for I went into the Mint too, took lodgings in a
very private place, dressed up in the habit of a widow, and
called myself Mrs. Flanders.

Here, however, I concealed myself, and though my new
acquaintances knew nothing of me, yet I soon got a great
deal of company about me; and whether it be that women are
scarce among the sorts of people that generally are to be found
there, or that some consolations in the miseries of the place
are more requisite than on other occasions, I soon found an
agreeable woman was exceedingly valuable among the sons
of affliction there, and that those that wanted money to pay
half a crown on the pound to their creditors, and that run in debt
at the sign of the Bull for their dinners, would yet find money
for a supper, if they liked the woman.

However, I kept myself safe yet, though I began, like my Lord
Rochester's mistress, that loved his company, but would not
admit him farther, to have the scandal of a whore, without the
joy; and upon this score, tired with the place, and indeed
with the company too, I began to think of removing.

It was indeed a subject of strange reflection to me to see men
who were overwhelmed in perplexed circumstances, who
were reduced some degrees below being ruined, whose families
were objects of their own terror and other people's charity,
yet while a penny lasted, nay, even beyond it, endeavouring to
drown themselves, labouring to forget former things, which
not it was the proper time to remember, making more work for
repentance, and sinning on, as a remedy for sin past.

But it is none of my talent to preach; these men were too
wicked, even for me. There was something horrid and absurd
in their way of sinning, for it was all a force even upon
themselves; they did not only act against conscience, but
against nature; they put a rape upon their temper to drown the
reflections, which their circumstances continually gave them;
and nothing was more easy than to see how sighs would
interrupt their songs, and paleness and anguish sit upon their
brows, in spite of the forced smiles they put on; nay, sometimes
it would break out at their very mouths when they had parted
with their money for a lewd treat or a wicked embrace. I have
heard them, turning about, fetch a deep sigh, and cry, 'What a
dog am I! Well, Betty, my dear, I'll drink thy health, though';
meaning the honest wife, that perhaps had not a half-crown
for herself and three or four children. The next morning they
are at their penitentials again; and perhaps the poor weeping
wife comes over to him, either brings him some account of
what his creditors are doing, and how she and the children are
turned out of doors, or some other dreadful news; and this
adds to his self-reproaches; but when he has thought and pored
on it till he is almost mad, having no principles to support him,
nothing within him or above him to comfort him, but finding
it all darkness on every side, he flies to the same relief again,
viz. to drink it away, debauch it away, and falling into  
company of men in just the same condition with himself, he
repeats the crime, and thus he goes every day one step
onward of his way to destruction.

I was not wicked enough for such fellows as these yet. On
the contrary, I began to consider here very seriously what I
had to do; how things stood with me, and what course I ought
to take. I knew I had no friends, no, not one friend or relation
in the world; and that little I had left apparently wasted, which
when it was gone, I saw nothing but misery and starving was
before me. Upon these considerations, I say, and filled with
horror at the place I was in, and the dreadful objects which I
had always before me, I resolved to be gone.

I had made an acquaintance with a very sober, good sort of a
woman, who was a widow too, like me, but in better circumstances.
Her husband had been a captain of a merchant ship, and having
had the misfortune to be cast away coming home on a voyage
from the West Indies, which would have been very profitable
if he had come safe, was so reduced by the loss, that though
he had saved his life then, it broke his heart, and killed him
afterwards; and his widow, being pursued by the creditors, was
forced to take shelter in the Mint. She soon made things up
with the help of friends, and was at liberty again; and finding
that I rather was there to be concealed, than by any particular
prosecutions and finding also that I agreed with her, or rather
she with me, in a just abhorrence of the place and of the
company, she invited to go home with her till I could put
myself in some posture of settling in the world to my mind;
withal telling me, that it was ten to one but some good captain
of a ship might take a fancy to me, and court me, in that part
of the town where she lived.

I accepted her offer, and was with her half a year, and should
have been longer, but in that interval what she proposed to me
happened to herself, and she married very much to her advantage.
But whose fortune soever was upon the increase, mine seemed
to be upon the wane, and I found nothing present, except two
or three boatswains, or such fellows, but as for the commanders,
they were generally of two sorts: 1. Such as, having good
business, that is to say, a good ship, resolved not to marry
but with advantage, that is, with a good fortune; 2. Such as,
being out of employ, wanted a wife to help them to a ship; I
mean (1) a wife who, having some money, could enable them
to hold, as they call it, a good part of a ship themselves, so to
encourage owners to come in; or (2) a wife who, if she had not
money, had friends who were concerned in shipping, and so
could help to put the young man into a good ship, which to
them is as good as a portion; and neither of these was my case,
so I looked like one that was to lie on hand.

This knowledge I soon learned by experience, viz. that the
state of things was altered as to  matrimony, and that I was not
to expect at London what I had found in the country: that
marriages were here the consequences of politic schemes for
forming interests, and carrying on business, and that Love had
no share, or but very little, in the matter.

That as my sister-in-law at Colchester had said, beauty, wit,
manners, sense, good humour, good behaviour, education,
virtue, piety, or any other qualification, whether of body or
mind, had no power to recommend; that money only made a
woman agreeable; that men chose mistresses indeed by the
gust of their affection, and it was requisite to a whore to be
handsome, well-shaped, have a good mien and a graceful
behaviour; but that for a wife, no deformity would shock the
fancy, no ill qualities the judgment; the money was the thing;
the portion was neither crooked nor monstrous, but the money
was always agreeable, whatever the wife was.

On the other hand, as the market ran very unhappily on the
men's side, I found the women had lost the privilege of saying
No; that it was a favour now for a woman to have the Question
asked, and if any young lady had so much arrogance as to
counterfeit a negative, she never had the opportunity given
her of denying twice, much less of recovering that false step,
and accepting what she had but seemed to decline. The men
had such choice everywhere, that the case of the women was
very unhappy; for they seemed to ply at every door, and if the
man was by great chance refused at one house, he was sure to
be received at the next.

Besides this, I observed that the men made no scruple to set
themselves out, and to go a-fortunehunting, as they call it,
when they had really no fortune themselves to demand it, or
merit to deserve it; and that they carried it so high, that a woman
was scarce allowed to inquire after the character or estate of
the person that pretended to her. This I had an example of, in
a young lady in the next house to me, and with whom I had
contracted an intimacy; she was courted by a young captain,
and though she had near #2000 to her fortune, she did but
inquire of some of his neighbours about his character, his
morals, or substance, and he took occasion at the next visit to
let her know, truly, that he took it very ill, and that he should
not give her the trouble of his visits any more. I heard of it,
and I had begun my acquaintance with her, I went to see her
upon it. She entered into a close conversation with me about
it, and unbosomed herself very freely. I perceived presently
that though she thought herself very ill used, yet she had no
power to resent it, and was exceedingly piqued that she had
lost him, and particularly that another of  less fortune had
gained him.

I fortified her mind against such a meanness, as I called it; I
told her, that as low as I was in the world, I would have
despised a man that should think I ought to take him upon his
own recommendation only, without having the liberty to
inform myself of his fortune and of his character; also I told
her, that as she had a good fortune, she had no need to stoop
to the disaster of the time; that it was enough that the men
could insult us that had but little money to recommend us, but
if she suffered such an affront to pass upon her without resenting
it, she would be rendered low-prized upon all occasions, and
would be the contempt of all the women in that part of the town;
that a woman can never want an opportunity to be revenged
of a man that has used her ill, and that there were ways enough
to humble such a fellow as that, or else certainly women were
the most unhappy creatures in the world.

I found she was very well pleased with the discourse, and she
told me seriously that she would be very glad to make him
sensible of her just resentment, and either to bring him on again,
or have the satisfaction of her revenge being as public as possible.

I told her, that if she would take my advice, I would tell her
how she should obtain her wishes in both those things, and
that I would engage I would bring the man to her door again,
and make him beg to be let in. She smiled at that, and soon
let me see, that if he came to her door, her resentment was
not so great as to give her leave to let him stand long there.

However, she listened very willingly to my offer of advice;
so I told her that the first thing she ought to do was a piece
of justice to herself, namely, that whereas she had been told
by several people that he had reported among the ladies that
he had left her, and pretended to give the advantage of the
negative to himself, she should take care to have it well spread
among the women--which she could not fail of an opportunity
to do in a neighbourhood so addicted to family news as that
she live in was--that she had inquired into his circumstances,
and found he was not the man as to estate he pretended to be.
'Let them be told, madam,' said I, 'that you had been well
informed that he was not the man that you expected, and that
you thought it was not safe to meddle with him; that you heard
he was of an ill temper, and that he boasted how he had used
the women ill upon many occasions, and that particularly he
was debauched in his morals', etc. The last of which, indeed,
had some truth in it; but at the same time I did not find that
she seemed to like him much the worse for that part.

As I had put this into her head, she came most readily into it.
Immediately she went to work to find instruments, and she
had very little difficulty in the search, for telling her story in
general to a couple of gossips in the neighbourhood, it was the
chat of the tea-table all over that part of the town, and I met
with it wherever I visited; also, as it was known that I was
acquainted with the young lady herself, my opinion was asked
very often, and I confirmed it with all the necessary aggravations,
and set out his character in the blackest colours; but then as a
piece of secret intelligence, I added, as what the other gossips
knew nothing of, viz. that I had heard he was in very bad
circumstances; that he was under a necessity of a fortune to
support his interest with the owners of the ship he commanded;
that his own part was not paid for, and if it was not paid quickly,
his owners would put him out of the ship, and his chief mate
was likely to command it, who offered to buy that part which
the captain had promised to take.

I added, for I confess I was heartily piqued at the rogue, as I
called him, that I had heard a rumour, too, that he had a wife
alive at Plymouth, and another in the West Indies, a thing which
they all knew was not very uncommon for such kind of gentlemen.

This worked as we both desire it, for presently the young lady
next door, who had a father and mother that governed both
her and her fortune, was shut up, and her father forbid him the
house. Also in one place more where he went, the woman had
the courage, however strange it was, to say No; and he could
try nowhere but he was reproached with his pride, and that he
pretended not to give the women leave to inquire into his
character, and the like.

Well, by this time he began to be sensible of his mistake; and
having alarmed all the women on that side of the water, he
went over to Ratcliff, and got access to some of the ladies
there; but though the young women there too were, according
to the fate of the day, pretty willing to be asked, yet such was
his ill-luck, that his character followed him over the water and
his good name was much the same there as it was on our side;
so that though he might have had wives enough, yet it did not
happen among the women that had good fortunes, which was
what he wanted.

But this was not all; she very ingeniously managed another
thing herself, for she got a young gentleman, who as a relation,  
and was indeed a married man, to come and visit her two or
three times a week in a very fine chariot and good liveries, and
her two agents, and I also, presently spread a report all over,
that this gentleman came to court her; that he was a gentleman
of a #1000 a year, and that he was fallen in love with her, and
that she was going to her aunt's in the city, because it was
inconvenient for the gentleman to come to her with his coach
in Redriff, the streets being so narrow and difficult.

This took immediately. The captain was laughed at in all
companies, and was ready to hang himself. He tried all the
ways possible to come at her again, and wrote the most
passionate letters to her in the world, excusing his former
rashness; and in short, by great application, obtained leave to
wait on her again, as he said, to clear his reputation.

At this meeting she had her full revenge of him; for she told
him she wondered what he took her to be, that she should
admit any man to a treaty of so much consequence as that to
marriage, without inquiring very well into his circumstances;
that if he thought she was to be huffed into wedlock, and that
she was in the same circumstances which her neighbours might
be in, viz. to take up with the first good Christian that came,
he was mistaken; that, in a word, his character was really bad,
or he was very ill beholden to his neighbours; and that unless
he could clear up some points, in which she had justly been
prejudiced, she had no more to say to him, but to do herself
justice, and give him the satisfaction of knowing that she was
not afraid to say No, either to him or any man else.

With that she told him what she had heard, or rather raised
herself by my means, of his character; his not having paid for
the part he pretended to own of the ship he commanded; of
the resolution of his owners to put him out of the command,
and to put his mate in his stead; and of the scandal raised on
his morals; his having been reproached with such-and-such
women, and having a wife at Plymouth and in the West Indies,
and the like; and she asked him whether he could deny that she
had good reason, if these things were not cleared up, to refuse
him, and in the meantime to insist upon having satisfaction in
points to significant as they were.

He was so confounded at her discourse that he could not
answer a word, and she almost began to believe that all was
true, by his disorder, though at the same time she knew that
she had been the raiser of all those reports herself.

After some time he recovered himself a little, and from that
time became the most humble, the most modest, and most
importunate man alive in his courtship.

She carried her jest on a great way. She asked him, if he
thought she was so at her last shift that she could or ought to
bear such treatment, and if he did not see that she did not
want those who thought it worth their while to come farther
to her than he did; meaning the gentleman whom she had
brought to visit her by way of sham.

She brought him by these tricks to submit to all possible
measures to satisfy her, as well of his circumstances as of his
behaviour. He brought her undeniable evidence of his having
paid for his part of the ship; he brought her certificates from
his owners, that the report of their intending to remove him
from the command of the ship and put his chief mate in was
false and groundless; in short, he was quite the reverse of what
he was before.

Thus I convinced her, that if the men made their advantage
of our sex in the affair of marriage, upon the supposition of
there being such choice to be had, and of the women being
so easy, it was only owing to this, that the women wanted
courage to maintain their ground and to play their part; and
that, according to my Lord Rochester,

     'A woman's ne'er so ruined but she can
     Revenge herself on her undoer, Man.'

After these things this young lady played her part so well, that
though she resolved to have him, and that indeed having him
was the main bent of her design, yet she made his obtaining
her be to him the most difficult thing in the world; and this she
did, not by a haughty reserved carriage, but by a just policy,
turning the tables upon him, and playing back upon him his
own game; for as he pretended, by a kind of lofty carriage, to
place himself above the occasion of a character, and to make
inquiring into his character a kind of an affront to him, she
broke with him upon that subject, and at the same time that
she make him submit to all possible inquiry after his affairs,
she apparently shut the door against his looking into her own.

It was enough to him to obtain her for a wife. As to what
she had, she told him plainly, that as he knew her circumstances,
it was but just she should know his; and though at the same
time he had only known her circumstances by common fame,
yet he had made so many protestations of his passion for her,
that he could ask no more but her hand to his grand request,
and the like ramble according to the custom of lovers. In short,
he left himself no room to ask any more questions about her
estate, and she took the advantage of it like a prudent woman,
for she placed part of her fortune so in trustees, without letting
him know anything of it, that it was quite out of his reach, and
made him be very well content with the rest.

It is true she was pretty well besides, that is to say, she had  
about #1400 in money, which she gave him; and the other,
after some time, she brought to light as a perquisite to herself,
which he was to accept as a mighty favour, seeing though it
was not to be his, it might ease him in the article of her particular
expenses; and I must add, that by this conduct the gentleman
himself became not only the more humble in his applications
to her to obtain her, but also was much the more an obliging
husband to her when he had her. I cannot but remind the ladies
here how much they place themselves below the common
station of a wife, which, if I may be allowed not to be partial,
is low enough already; I say, they place themselves below their
common station, and prepare their own mortifications, by their
submitting so to be insulted by the men beforehand, which I
confess I see no necessity of.

This relation may serve, therefore, to let the ladies see that
the advantage is not so much on the other side as the men
think it is; and though it may be true that the men have but too
much choice among us, and that some women may be found
who will dishonour themselves, be cheap, and easy to come
at, and will scarce wait to be asked, yet if they will have women,
as I may say, worth having, they may find them as uncomeatable
as ever and that those that are otherwise are a sort of people
that have such deficiencies, when had, as rather recommend
the ladies that are difficult than encourage the men to go on
with their easy courtship, and expect wives equally valuable
that will come at first call.

Nothing is more certain than that the ladies always gain of the
men by keeping their ground, and letting their pretended
lovers see they can resent being slighted, and that they are not
afraid of saying No. They, I observe, insult us mightily with
telling us of the number of women; that the wars, and the sea,
and trade, and other incidents have carried the men so much
away, that there is no proportion between the numbers of the
sexes, and therefore the women have the disadvantage; but I
am far from granting that the number of women is so great,
or the number of men so small; but if they will have me tell
the truth, the disadvantage of the women is a terrible scandal
upon the men, and it lies here, and here only; namely, that the
age is so wicked, and the sex so debauched, that, in short, the
number of such men as an honest woman ought to meddle
with is small indeed, and it is but here and there that a man is
to be found who is fit for a woman to venture upon.

But the consequence even of that too amounts to no more
than this, that women ought to be the more nice; for how do
we know the just character of the man that makes the offer?
To say that the woman should be the more easy on this
occasion, is to say we should be the forwarder to venture
because of the greatness of the danger, which, in my way of
reasoning, is very absurd.

On the contrary, the women have ten thousand times the more
reason to be wary and backward, by how much the hazard of
being betrayed is the greater; and would the ladies consider
this, and act the wary part, they would discover every cheat
that offered; for, in short, the lives of very few men nowadays
will bear a character; and if the ladies do but make a little
inquiry, they will soon be able to distinguish the men and
deliver themselves. As for women that do not think they own
safety worth their though, that, impatient of their perfect state,
resolve, as they call it, to take the first good Christian that
comes, that run into matrimony as a horse rushes into the battle,
I can say nothing to them but this, that they are a sort of ladies
that are to be prayed for among the rest of distempered people,
and to me they look like people that venture their whole estates
in a lottery where there is a hundred thousand blanks to one prize.

No man of common-sense will value a woman the less for not
giving up herself at the first attack, or for accepting his proposal
without inquiring into his person or character; on the contrary,
he must think her the weakest of all creatures in the world, as
the rate of men now goes. In short, he must have a very
contemptible opinion of her capacities, nay, every of her
understanding, that, having but one case of her life, shall call
that life away at once, and make matrimony, like death, be a
leap in the dark.

I would fain have the conduct of my sex a little regulated in
this particular, which is the thing in which, of all the parts of
life, I think at this time we suffer most in; 'tis nothing but lack
of courage, the fear of not being married at all, and of that
frightful state of life called an old maid, of which I have a
story to tell by itself. This, I say, is the woman's snare; but
would the ladies once but get above that fear and manage
rightly, they would more certainly avoid it by standing their
ground, in a case so absolutely necessary to their felicity, that
by exposing themselves as they do; and if they did not marry
so soon as they may do otherwise, they would make themselves
amends by marrying safer. She is always married too soon who
gets a bad husband, and she is never married too late who gets
a good one; in a word, there is no woman, deformity or lost
reputation excepted, but if she manages well, may be married
safely one time or other; but if she precipitates herself, it is ten
thousand to one but she is undone.

But I come now to my own case, in which there was at this
time no little nicety. The circumstances I was in made the
offer of a good husband the most necessary thing in the world
to me, but I found soon that to be made cheap and easy was
not the way. It soon began to be found that the widow had
no fortune, and to say this was to say all that was ill of me,
for I began to be dropped in all the discourses of matrimony.
Being well-bred, handsome, witty, modest, and agreeable; all
which I had allowed to my character--whether justly or no is
not the purpose--I say, all these would not do without the
dross, which way now become more valuable than virtue itself.
In short, the widow, they said, had no money.

I resolved, therefore, as to the state of my present circumstances,
that it was absolutely necessary to change my station, and make
a new appearance in some other place where I was not known,
and even to pass by another name if I found occasion.

I communicated my thoughts to my intimate friend, the captain's
lady, whom I had so faithfully served in her case with the
captain, and who was as ready to serve me in the same kind
as I could desire. I made no scruple to lay my circumstances
open to her; my stock was but low, for I had made but about
#540 at the close of my last affair, and I had wasted some of
that; however, I had about #460 left, a great many very rich
clothes, a gold watch, and some jewels, though of no
extraordinary value, and about #30 or #40 left in linen not
disposed of.

My dear and faithful friend, the captain's wife, was so sensible
of the service I had done her in the affair above, that she was
not only a steady friend to me, but, knowing my circumstances,
she frequently made me presents as money came into her
hands, such as fully amounted to a maintenance, so that I spent
none of my own; and at last she made this unhappy proposal
to me, viz. that as we had observed, as above, how the men
made no scruple to set themselves out as persons meriting a
woman of fortune, when they had really no fortune of their
own, it was but just to deal with them in their own way and,
if it was possible, to deceive the deceiver.

The captain's lady, in short, put this project into my head, and
told me if I would be ruled by her I should certainly get a
husband of fortune, without leaving him any room to reproach
me with want of my own. I told her, as I had reason to do,
that I would give up myself wholly to her directions, and that
I would have neither tongue to speak nor feet to step in that
affair but as she should direct me, depending that she would
extricate me out of every difficulty she brought me into,
which she said she would answer for.

The first step she put me upon was to call her cousin, and to
to a relation's house of hers in the country, where she directed
me, and where she brought her husband to visit me; and calling
me cousin, she worked matters so about, that her husband
and she together invited me most passionately to come to town
and be with them, for they now live in a quite different place
from where they were before. In the next place, she tells her
husband that I had at least #1500 fortune, and that after some
of my relations I was like to have a great deal more.

It was enough to tell her husband this; there needed nothing
on my side. I was but to sit still and wait the event, for it
presently went all over the neighbourhood that the young
widow at Captain ----'s was a fortune, that she had at least
#1500, and perhaps a great deal more, and that the captain
said so; and if the captain was asked at any timeabout me,
he made no scruple to affirm it, though he knew not one word
of the matter, other  than that his wife had told him so; and in
this he thought no harm, for he really believed it to be so,
because he had it from his wife: so slender a foundation will
those fellows build upon, if they do but think there is a fortune
in the game. With the reputation of this fortune, I presently
found myself blessed with admirers enough, and that I had my
choice of men, as scarce as they said they were, which, by the
way, confirms what I was saying before. This being my case,
I, who had a subtle game to play, had nothing now to do but
to single out from them all the properest man that might be
for my purpose; that is to say, the man who was most likely
to depend upon the hearsay of a fortune, and not inquire too
far into the particulars; and unless I did this I did nothing, for
my case would not bear much inquiry.

I picked out my man without much difficulty, by the judgment
I made of his way of courting me. I had let him run on with
his protestations and oaths that he loved me above all the world;
that if I would make him happy, that was enough; all which I
knew was upon supposition, nay, it was upon a full satisfaction,
that I was very rich, though I never told him a word of it myself.

This was my man; but I was to try him to the bottom, and
indeed in that consisted my safety; for if he baulked, I knew I
was undone, as surely as he was undone if he took me; and
if I did not make some scruple about his fortune, it was the
way to lead him to raise some about mine; and first, therefore,
I pretended on all occasions to doubt his sincerity, and told
him, perhaps he only courted me for my fortune. He stopped
my mouth in that part with the thunder of his protestations,
as above,  but still I pretended to doubt.

One morning he pulls off his diamond ring, and writes upon
the glass of the sash in my chamber this line--
     'You I love, and you alone.'

I read it, and asked him to lend me his ring, with which I wrote
under it, thus--

    'And so in love says every one.'

He takes his ring again, and writes another line thus--

     'Virtue alone is an estate.'  

I borrowed it again, and I wrote under it--

     'But money's virtue, gold is fate.'

He coloured as red as fire to see me turn so quick upon him,
and in a kind of a rage told me he would conquer me, and
writes again thus--

     'I scorn your gold, and yet I love.'

I ventured all upon the last cast of poetry, as you'll see, for I
wrote boldly under his last--

     'I'm poor: let's see how kind you'll prove.'  

This was a sad truth to me; whether he believed me or no, I
could not tell; I supposed then that he did not. However, he
flew to me, took me in his arms, and, kissing me very eagerly,
and with the greatest passion imaginable, he held me fast till
he called for a pen and ink, and then told me he could not wait
the tedious writing on the glass, but, pulling out a piece of
paper, he began and wrote again--

     'Be mine, with all your poverty.'

I took his pen, and followed him immediately, thus--

     'Yet secretly you hope I lie.'

He told me that was unkind, because it was not just, and that
I put him upon contradicting me, which did not consist with
good manners, any more than with his affection; and therefore,
since I had insensibly drawn him into this poetical scribble, he
begged I would not oblige him to break it off; so he writes
again--

     'Let love alone be our debate.'

I wrote again--

     'She loves enough that does not hate.'

This he took for a favour, and so laid down the cudgels, that
is to say, the pen; I say, he took if for a favour, and a mighty
one it was, if he had known all. However, he took it as I meant
it, that is, to let him think I was inclined to go on with him, as
indeed I had all the reason in the world to do, for he was the
best-humoured, merry sort of a fellow that I ever met with,
and I often reflected on myself how doubly criminal it was to
deceive such a man; but that necessity, which pressed me to
a settlement suitable to my condition, was my authority for it;
and certainly his affection to me, and the goodness of his temper,
however they might argue against using him ill, yet they strongly
argued to me that he would better take the disappointment
than some fiery-tempered wretch, who might have nothing to
recommend him but those passions which would serve only to
make a woman miserable all her days.

Besides, though I jested with him (as he supposed it) so
often about my poverty, yet, when he found it to be true, he
had foreclosed all manner of objection, seeing, whether he
was in jest or in earnest, he had declared he took me without
any regard to my portion, and, whether I was in jest or in
earnest, I had declared myself to be very poor; so that, in a
word, I had him fast both ways; and though he might say
afterwards he was cheated, yet he could never say that I had
cheated him.

He pursued me close after this, and as I saw there was no need
to fear losing him, I played the indifferent part with him longer
than prudence might otherwise have dictated to me. But I
considered how much this caution and indifference would give
me the advantage over him, when I should come to be under
the necessity of owning my own circumstances to him; and I
managed it the more warily, because I found he inferred from
thence, as indeed he ought to do, that I either had the more
money or the more judgment, and would not venture at all.

I took the freedom one day, after we had talked pretty close
to the subject, to tell him that it was true I had received the
compliment of a lover from him, namely, that he would take
me without inquiring into my fortune, and I would make him
a suitable return in this, viz. that I would make as little inquiry
into his as consisted with reason, but I hoped he would allow
me to ask a few questions, which he would answer or not as
he thought fit; and that I would not be offended if he did not
answer me at all; one of these questions related to our manner
of living, and the place where, because I had heard he had a
great plantation in Virginia, and that he had talked of going
to live there, and I told him I did not care to be transported.

He began from this discourse to let me voluntarily into all
his affairs, and to tell me in a frank, open way all his
circumstances, by which I found he was very well to pass in
the world; but that great part of his estate consisted of three
plantations, which he had in Virginia, which brought him in a
very good income, generally speaking, to the tune of #300, a
year, but that if he was to live upon them, would bring him in
four times as much. 'Very well,' thought I; 'you shall carry
me thither as soon as you please, though I won't tell you so
beforehand.'

I jested with him extremely about the figure he would make
in Virginia; but I found he would do anything I desired, though
he did not seem glad to have me undervalue his plantations,
so I turned my tale. I told him I had good reason not to go
there to live, because if his plantations were worth so much
there, I had not a fortune suitable to a gentleman of #1200 a
year, as he said his estate would be.

He replied generously, he did not ask what my fortune was;
he had told me from the beginning he would not, and he would
be as good as his word; but whatever it was, he assured me he
would never desire me to go to Virginia with him, or go thither
himself without me, unless I was perfectly willing, and made
it my choice.

All this, you may be sure, was as I wished, and indeed nothing
could have happened more perfectly agreeable. I carried it on
as far as this with a sort of indifferency that he often wondered
at, more than at first, but which was the only support of his
courtship; and I mention it the rather to intimate again to the
ladies that nothing but want of courage for such an indifferency
makes our sex so cheap, and prepares them to be ill-used as
they are; would they venture the loss of a pretending fop now
and then, who carries it high upon the point of his own merit,
they would certainly be less slighted, and courted more. Had
I discovered really and truly what my great fortune was, and
that in all I had not full #500 when he expected #1500, yet I
had hooked him so fast, and played him so long, that I was
satisfied he would have had me in my worst circumstances;
and indeed it was less a surprise to him when he learned the
truth than it would have been, because having not the least
blame to lay on me, who had carried it with an air of indifference
to the last, he would not say one word, except that indeed he
thought it had been more, but that if it had been less he did
not repent his bargain; only that he should not be able to
maintain me so well as he intended.

In short, we were married, and very happily married on my
side, I assure you, as to the man; for he was the best-humoured
man that every woman had, but his circumstances were not so
good as I imagined, as, on the other hand, he had not bettered
himself by marrying so much as he expected.

When we were married, I was shrewdly put to it to bring him
that little stock I had, and to let him see it was no more; but
there was a necessity for it, so I took my opportunity one day
when we were alone, to enter into a short dialogue with him
about it. 'My dear,' said I, 'we have been married a fortnight;
is it not time to let you know whether you have got a wife
with something or with nothing?'  'Your own time for that,
my dear,' says he; 'I am satisfied that I have got the wife I
love; I have not troubled you much,' says he, 'with my inquiry
after it.'

'That's true,' says I, 'but I have a great difficulty upon me
about it, which I scarce know how to manage.'

'What's that, m dear?' says he.

'Why,' says I, ''tis a little hard upon me, and 'tis harder upon
you. I am told that Captain ----' (meaning my friend's husband)
'has told you I had a great deal more money than I ever
pretended to have, and I am sure I never employed him to do so.'

'Well,' says he, 'Captain ---- may have told me so, but what
then? If you have not so much, that may lie at his door, but
you never told me what you had, so I have no reason to blame
you if you have nothing at all.'

'That's is so just,' said I, 'and so generous, that it makes my
having but a little a double affliction to me.'

'The less you have, my dear,' says he, 'the worse for us both;
but I hope your affliction you speak of is not caused for fear
I should be unkind to you, for want of a portion. No, no, if
you have nothing, tell me plainly, and at once; I may perhaps
tell the captain he has cheated me, but I can never say you
have cheated me, for did you not give it under your hand that
you were poor? and so I ought to expect you to be.'

'Well,' said I, 'my dear, I am glad I have not been concerned
in deceiving you before marriage. If I deceive you since, 'tis
ne'er the worse; that I am poor is too true, but not so poor as
to have nothing neither'; so I pulled out some bank bills, and
gave him about #160. 'There's something, my dear,' said I,
'and not quite all neither.'

I had brought him so near to expecting nothing, by what I had
said before, that the money, though the sum was small in itself,
was doubly welcome to him; he owned it was more than he
looked for, and that he did not question by my discourse to
him, but that my fine clothes, gold watch, and a diamond ring
or two, had been all my fortune.

I let him please himself with that #160 two or three days, and
then, having been abroad that day, and as if I had  been to fetch
it, I brought him #100 more home in gold, and told him there
was a little more portion for him; and, in short, in about a week
more I brought him #180 more, and about #60 in linen, which
I made him believe I had been obliged to take with the #100
which I gave him in gold, as a composition for a debt of #600,
being little more than five shillings in the pound, and overvalued too.

'And now, my dear,' says I to him, 'I am very sorry to tell you,
that there is all, and that I have given you my whole fortune.'
I added, that if the person who had my #600 had not abused
me, I had been worth #1000 to him, but that as it was, I had
been faithful to him, and reserved nothing to myself, but if it
had been more he should have had it.

He was so obliged by the manner, and so pleased with the sum,
for he had been in a terrible fright lest it had been nothing at
all, that he accepted it very thankfully. And thus I got over
the fraud of passing for a fortune without money, and cheating
a man into marrying me on pretence of a fortune; which, by
the way, I take to be one of the most dangerous steps a woman
can take, and in which she runs the most hazard of being
ill-used afterwards.

My husband, to give him his due, was a man of infinite good
nature, but he was no fool; and finding his income not suited
to the manner of living which he had intended, if I had brought
him what he expected, and being under a disappointment in
his return of his plantations in Virginia, he discovered many
times his inclination of going over to Virginia, to live upon
his own; and often would be magnifying the way of living
there, how cheap, how plentiful, how pleasant, and the like.

I began presently to understand this meaning, and I took
him up very plainly one morning, and told him that I did so;
that I found his estate turned to no account at this distance,
compared to what it would do if he lived upon the spot, and
that I found he had a mind to go and live there; and I added,
that I was sensible he had been disappointed in a wife, and
that finding his expectations not answered that way, I could
do no less, to make him amends, than tell him that I was very
willing to go over to Virginia with him and live there.

He said a thousand kind things to me upon the subject of my
making such a proposal to him. He told me, that however
he was disappointed in his expectations of a fortune, he was
not disappointed in a wife, and that I was all to him that a
wife could be, and he was more than satisfied on the whole
when the particulars were put together, but that this offer was
so kind, that it was more than he could express.

To bring the story short, we agreed to go. He told me that he
had a very good house there, that it was well furnished, that
his mother was alive and lived in it, and one sister, which was
all the relations he had; that as soon as he came there, his
mother would remove to another house, which was her own
for life, and his after her decease; so that I should have all the
house to myself; and I found all this to be exactly as he had
said.

To make this part of the story short, we put on board the ship
which we went in, a large quantity of good furniture for our
house, with stores of linen and other necessaries, and a good
cargo for sale, and away we went.

To give an account of the manner of our voyage, which was
long and full of dangers, is out of my way; I kept no journal,
neither did my husband. All that I can say is, that after a
terrible passage, frighted twice with dreadful storms, and once
with what was still more terrible, I mean a pirate who came
on board and took away almost all our provisions; and which
would have been beyond all to me, they had once taken my
husband to go along with them, but by entreaties were prevailed
with to leave him;--I say, after all these terrible things, we
arrived in York River in Virginia, and coming to our plantation,
we were received with all the demonstrations of tenderness
and affection, by my husband's mother, that were possible to
be expressed.

We lived here all together, my mother-in-law, at my entreaty,
continuing in the house, for she was too kind a mother to be
parted with; my husband likewise continued the same as at
first, and I thought myself the happiest creature alive, when
an odd and surprising event put an end to all that felicity in a
moment, and rendered my condition the most uncomfortable,
if not the most miserable, in the world.

My mother was a mighty cheerful, good-humoured old woman
--I may call her old woman, for her son was above thirty; I
say she was very pleasant, good company, and used to entertain
me, in particular, with abundance of stories to divert me, as
well of  the country we were in as of the people.

Among the rest, she often told me how the greatest part of
the inhabitants of the colony came thither in very indifferent
circumstances from England; that, generally speaking, they
were of two sorts; either, first, such as were brought over by
masters of ships to be sold as servants. 'Such as we call them,
my dear,' says she, 'but they are more properly called slaves.'  
Or, secondly, such as are transported from Newgate and other
prisons, after having been found guilty of felony and other
crimes punishable with death.

'When they come here,' says she, 'we make no difference; the
planters buy them, and they work together in the field till
their time is out. When 'tis expired,' said she, 'they have
encouragement given them to plant for themselves; for they
have a certain number of acres of land allotted them by the
country, and they go to work to clear and cure the land, and
then to plant it with tobacco and corn for their own use; and
as the tradesmen and merchants will trust them with tools and
clothes and other necessaries, upon the credit of their crop
before it is grown, so they again plant every year a little more
than the year before, and so buy whatever they want with the
crop that is before them.

'Hence, child,' says she, 'man a Newgate-bird becomes a great
man, and we have,' continued she, 'several justices of the peace,
officers of the trained bands, and magistrates of the towns they
live in, that have been burnt in the hand.'

She was going on with that part of the story, when her own
part in it interrupted her, and with a great deal of good-humoured
confidence she told me she was one of the second sort of
inhabitants herself; that she came away openly, having ventured
too far in a particular case, so that she was become a criminal.
'And here's the mark of it, child,' says she; and, pulling off her
glove, 'look ye here,' says she, turning up the palm of her
hand, and showed me a very fine white arm and hand, but
branded in the inside of the hand, as in such cases it must be.

This story was very moving to me, but my mother, smiling,
said, 'You need not thing a thing strange, daughter, for as I
told you, some of the best men in this country are burnt in the
hand, and they are not ashamed to own it. There's Major ----,'
says she, 'he was an eminent pickpocket; there's Justice Ba----r,
was a shoplifter, and both of them were burnt in the hand; and
I could name you several such as they are.'

We had frequent discourses of this kind, and abundance of
instances she gave me of the like. After some time, as she was
telling some stories of one that was transported but a few
weeks ago, I began in an intimate kind of way to ask her to
tell me something of her own story, which she did with the
utmost plainness and sincerity; how she had fallen into very ill
company in London in her young days, occasioned by her
mother sending her frequently to carry victuals and other relief
to a kinswoman of hers who was a prisoner in Newgate, and
who lay in a miserable starving condition, was afterwards
condemned to be hanged, but having got respite by pleading
her belly, dies afterwards in the prison.

Here my mother-in-law ran out in a long account of the wicked
practices in that dreadful place, and how it ruined more young
people that all the town besides. 'And child,' says my mother,
'perhaps you may know little of it, or, it may be, have heard
nothing about it; but depend upon it,' says she, 'we all know
here that there are more thieves and rogues made by that one
prison of Newgate than by all the clubs and societies of villains
in the nation; 'tis that cursed place,' says my mother, 'that half
peopled this colony.'

Here she went on with her own story so long, and in so particular
a manner, that I began to be very uneasy; but coming to one
particular that required telling her name, I thought I should
have sunk down in the place. She perceived I was out of
order, and asked me if I was not well, and what ailed me. I
told her I was so affected with the melancholy story she had
told, and the terrible things she had gone through, that it had
overcome me, and I begged of her to talk no more of it. 'Why,
my dear,' says she very kindly, 'what need these things trouble
you? These passages were long before your time, and they
give me no trouble at all now; nay, I look back on them with
a particular satisfaction, as they have been a means to bring
me to this place.'  Then she went on to tell me how she very
luckily fell into a good family, where, behaving herself well,
and her mistress dying, her master married her, by whom she
had my husband and his sister, and that by her diligence and
good management after her husband's death, she had improved
the plantations to such a degree as they then were, so that most
of the estate was of her getting, not her husband's, for she had
been a widow upwards of sixteen years.

I heard this part of they story with very little attention, because
I wanted much to retire and give vent to my passions, which
I did soon after; and let any one judge what must be the anguish
of my mind, when I came to reflect that this was certainly no
more or less than my own mother, and I had now had two
children, and was big with another by my own brother, and
lay with him still every night.

I was now the most unhappy of all women in the world. Oh!
had the story never been told me, all had been well; it had been
no crime to have lain with my husband, since as to his being
my relation I had known nothing of it.

I had now such a load on my mind that it kept me perpetually
waking; to reveal it, which would have been some ease to me,
I could not find would be to any purpose, and yet to conceal
it would be next to impossible; nay, I did not doubt but I should
talk of it in my sleep, and tell my husband of it whether I would
or no. If I discovered it, the least thing I could expect was to
lose my husband, for he was too nice and too honest a man
to have continued my husband after he had known I had been
his sister; so that I was perplexed to the last degree.

I leave it to any man to judge what difficulties presented to
my view. I was away from my native country, at a distance
prodigious, and the return to me unpassable. I lived very well,
but in a circumstance insufferable in itself. If I had discovered
myself to my mother, it might be difficult to convince her of
the particulars, and I had no way to prove them. On the other
hand, if she had questioned or doubted me, I had been undone,
for the bare suggestion would have immediately separated me
from my husband, without gaining my mother or him, who
would have been neither a husband nor a brother; so that
between the surprise on one hand, and the uncertainty on the
other, I had been sure to be undone.

In the meantime, as I was but too sure of the fact, I lived
therefore in open avowed incest and whoredom, and all under
the appearance of an honest wife; and though I was not much
touched with the crime of it, yet the action had something in
it shocking to nature, and made my husband, as he thought
himself, even nauseous to me.

However, upon the most sedate consideration, I resolved that
it was absolutely necessary to conceal it all and not make the
least discovery of it either to mother or husband; and thus I
lived with the greatest pressure imaginable for three years
more, but had no more children.

During this time my mother used to be frequently telling me
old stories of her former adventures, which, however, were
no ways pleasant to me; for by it, though she did not tell it me
in plain terms, yet I could easily understand, joined with what
I had heard myself, of my first tutors, that in her younger days
she had been both whore and thief; but I verily believed she
had lived to repent sincerely of both, and that she was then a
very pious, sober, and religious woman.

Well, let her life have been what it would then, it was certain
that my life was very uneasy to me; for I lived, as I have said,
but in the worst sort of whoredom, and as I could expect no
good of it, so really no good issue came of it, and all my
seeming prosperity wore off, and ended in misery and
destruction. It was some time, indeed, before it came to this,
for, but I know not by what ill fate guided, everything went
wrong with us afterwards, and that which was worse, my
husband grew strangely altered, forward, jealous, and unkind,
and I was as impatient of bearing his carriage, as the carriage
was unreasonable and unjust. These things proceeded so far,
that we came at last to be in such ill terms with one another,
that I claimed a promise of him, which he entered willingly
into with me when I consented to come from England with
him, viz. that if I found the country not to agree with me, or
that I did not like to live there, I should come away to England
again when I pleased, giving him a year's warning to settle
his affairs.

I say, I now claimed this promise of him, and I must confess
I did it not in the most obliging terms that could be in the
world neither; but I insisted that he treated me ill, that I was
remote from my friends, and could do myself no justice, and
that he was jealous without cause, my conversation having
been unblamable, and he having no pretense for it, and that to
remove to England would take away all occasion from him.

I insisted so peremptorily upon it, that he could not avoid
coming to a point, either to keep his word with me or to break
it; and this, notwithstanding he used all the skill he was master
of, and employed his mother and other agents to prevail with
me to alter my resolutions; indeed, the bottom of the thing lay
at my heart, and that made all his endeavours fruitless, for my
heart was alienated from him as a husband. I loathed the
thoughts of bedding with him, and used a thousand pretenses
of illness and humour to prevent his touching me, fearing
nothing more than to be with child by him, which to be sure
would have prevented, or at least delayed, my going over to
England.

However, at last I put him so out of humour, that he took up
a rash and fatal resolution; in short, I should not go to England;
and though he had promised me, yet it was an unreasonable
thing for me to desire it; that it would be ruinous to his affairs,
would unhinge his whole family, and be next to an undoing
him in the world; that therefore I ought not to desire it of him,
and that no wife in the world that valued her family and her
husband's prosperity would insist upon such a thing.

This plunged me again, for when I considered the thing
calmly, and took my husband as he really was, a diligent,
careful man in the main work of laying up an estate for his
children, and that he knew nothing of the dreadful circumstances
that he was in, I could not but confess to myself that my
proposal was very unreasonable, and what no wife that had
the good of her family at heart would have desired.

But my discontents were of another nature; I looked upon him
no longer as a husband, but as a near relation, the son of my
own mother, and I resolved somehow or other to be clear of
him, but which way I did not know, nor did it seem possible.

It is said by the ill-natured world, of our sex, that if we are
set on a thing, it is impossible to turn us from our resolutions;
in short, I never ceased poring upon the means to bring to
pass my voyage, and came that length with my husband at last,
as to propose going without him. This provoked him to the
last degree, and he called me not only an unkind wife, but an
unnatural mother, and asked me how I could entertain such a
thought without horror, as that of leaving my two children
(for one was dead) without a mother, and to be brought up by
strangers, and never to see them more. It was true, had things
been right, I should not have done it, but now it was my real
desire never to see them, or him either, any more; and as to the
charge of unnatural, I could easily answer it to myself, while
I knew that the whole relation was unnatural in the highest
degree in the world.

However, it was plain there was no bringing my husband to
anything; he would neither go with me nor let me go without
him, and it was quite out of my power to stir without his  
consent, as any one that knows the constitution of the country
I was in, knows very well.

We had many family quarrels about it, and they began in
time to grow up to a dangerous height; for as I was quite
estranged form my husband (as he was called) in affection, so
I took no heed to my words, but sometimes gave him language
that was provoking; and, in short, strove all I could to bring
him to a parting with me, which was what above all things in
the world I desired most.

He took my carriage very ill, and indeed he might well do so,
for at last I refused to bed with him, and carrying on the breach
upon all occasions to extremity, he told me once he thought I
was mad, and if I did not alter my conduct, he would put me
under cure; that is to say, into a madhouse. I told him he
should find I was far enough from mad, and that it was not in
his power, or any other villain's, to murder me. I confess at
the same time I was heartily frighted at his thoughts of putting
me into a madhouse, which would at once have destroyed all
the possibility of breaking the truth out, whatever the occasion
might be; for that then no one would have given credit to a
word of it.

This therefore brought me to a resolution, whatever came of
it, to lay open my whole case; but which way to do it, or to
whom, was an inextricable difficulty, and took me many months
to resolve. In the meantime, another quarrel with my husband
happened, which came up to such a mad extreme as almost
pushed me on to tell it him all to his face; but though I kept it
in so as not to come to the particulars, I spoke so much as put
him into the utmost confusion, and in the end brought out the
whole story.

He began with a calm expostulation upon my being so resolute
to go to England; I defended it, and one hard word bringing
on another, as is usual in all family strife, he told me I did not
treat him as if he was my husband, or talk of my children as if
I was a mother; and, in short, that I did not deserve to be used
as a wife; that he had used all the fair means possible with me;
that he had argued with all the kindness and calmness that a
husband or a Christian ought to do, and that I made him such
a vile return, that I treated him rather like a dog than a man,
and rather like the most contemptible stranger than a husband;
that he was very loth to use violence with me, but that, in short,
he saw a necessity of it now, and that for the future he should
be obliged to take such measures as should reduce me to my
duty.

My blood was now fired to the utmost, though I knew what
he had said was very true, and nothing could appear more
provoked. I told him, for his fair means and his foul, they
were equally contemned by me; that for my going to England,
I was resolved on it, come what would; and that as to treating
him not like a husband, and not showing myself a mother to
my children, there might be something more in it than he
understood at present; but, for his further consideration, I
thought fit to tell him thus much, that he neither was my lawful
husband, nor they lawful children, and that I had reason to
regard neither of them more than I did.

I confess I was moved to pity him when I spoke it, for he
turned pale as death, and stood mute as one thunderstruck,
and once or twice I thought he would have fainted; in short,
it put him in a fit something like an apoplex; he trembled, a
sweat or dew ran off his face, and yet he was cold as a clod,
so that I was forced to run and fetch something for him to
keep life in him. When he recovered of that, he grew sick and
vomited, and in a little after was put to bed, and the next
morning was, as he had been indeed all night, in a violent fever.

However, it went off again, and he recovered, though but
slowly, and when he came to be a little better, he told me I
had given him a mortal wound with my tongue, and he had
only one thing to ask before he desired an explanation. I
interrupted him, and told him I was sorry I had gone so far,
since I saw what disorder it put him into, but I desired him
not to talk to me of explanations, for that would but make
things worse.

This heightened his impatience, and, indeed, perplexed him
beyond all bearing; for now he began to suspect that there
was some mystery yet unfolded, but could not make the least
guess at the real particulars of it; all that ran in his brain was,
that I had another husband alive, which I could not say in fact
might not be true, but I assured him, however, there was not
the least of that in it; and indeed, as to my other husband, he
was effectually dead in law to me, and had told me I should
look on him as such, so I had not the least uneasiness on that
score.

But now I found the thing too far gone to conceal it much
longer, and my husband himself gave me an opportunity to
ease myself of the secret, much to my satisfaction. He had
laboured with me three or four weeks, but to no purpose, only
to tell him whether I had spoken these words only as the effect
of my passion, to put him in a passion, or whether there was
anything of  truth in the bottom of them. But I continued
inflexible, and would explain nothing, unless he would first
consent to my going to England, which he would never do,
he said, while he lived; on the other hand, I said it was in my
power to make him willing when I pleased--nay, to make him
entreat me to go; and this increased his curiosity, and made him
importunate to the highest degree, but it was all to no purpose.

At length he tells all this story to his mother, and sets her upon
me to get the main secret out of me, and she used her utmost
skill with me indeed; but I put her to a full stop at once by
telling her that the reason and mystery of the whole matter lay
in herself, and that it was my respect to her that had made me
conceal it; and that, in short, I could go no farther, and therefore
conjured her not to insist upon it.

She was struck dumb at this suggestion, and could not tell
what to say or to think; but, laying aside the supposition as a
policy of mine, continued her importunity on account of her
son, and, if possible, to make up the breach between us two.
As to that, I told her that it was indeed a good design in her,
but that it was impossible to be done; and that if I should reveal
to her the truth of what she desired, she would grant it to be
impossible, and cease to desire it. At last I seemed to be
prevailed on by her importunity, and told her I dared trust her
with a secret of the greatest importance, and she would soon
see that this was so, and that I would consent to lodge it in
her breast, if she would engage solemnly not to acquaint her
son with it without my consent.

She was long in promising this part, but rather than not come
at the main secret, she agreed to that too, and after a great
many other preliminaries, I began, and told her the whole story.
First I told her how much she was concerned in all the unhappy
breach which had happened between her son and me, by telling
me her own story and her London name; and that the surprise
she saw I was in was upon that occasion.  The I told her my
own story, and my name, and assured her, by such other tokens
as she could not deny, that I was no other, nor more or less,
than her own child, her daughter, born of her body in Newgate;
the same that had saved her from the gallows by being in her
belly, and the same that she left in such-and-such hands when
she was transported.

It is impossible to express the astonishment she was in; she
was not inclined to believe the story, or to remember the
particulars, for she immediately foresaw the confusion that
must follow in the family upon it. But everything concurred
so exactly with the stories she had told me of herself, and which,
if she had not told me, she would perhaps have been content
to have denied, that she had stopped her own mouth, and she
had nothing to do but to take me about the neck and kiss me,
and cry most vehemently over me, without speaking one word
for a long time together. At last she broke out: 'Unhappy child!'
says she, 'what miserable chance could bring thee hither? and
in the arms of my own son, too! Dreadful girl,' says she, 'why,
we are all undone! Married to thy own brother! Three children,
and two alive, all of the same flesh and blood! My son and my
daughter lying together as husband and wife! All confusion
and distraction for ever! Miserable family! what will become
of us? What is to be said? What is to be done?'  And thus she
ran on for a great while; nor had I any power to speak, or if
I had, did I know what to say, for every word wounded me to
the soul. With this kind of amazement on our thoughts we
parted for the first time, though my mother was more surprised
than I was, because it was more news to her than to me.
However, she promised again to me at parting, that she would
say nothing of it to her son, till we had talked of it again.

It was not long, you may be sure, before we had a second
conference upon the same subject; when, as if she had been
willing to forget the story she had told me of herself, or to
suppose that I had forgot some of the particulars, she began
to tell them with alterations and omissions; but I refreshed her
memory and set her to rights in many things which I supposed
she had forgot, and then came in so opportunely with the
whole history, that it was impossible for her to go from it; and
then she fell into her rhapsodies again, and exclamations at the
severity of her misfortunes. When these things were a little
over with her, we fell into a close debate about what should
be first done before we gave an account of the matter to my
husband. But to what purpose could be all our consultations?
We could neither of us see our way through it, nor see how it
could be safe to open such a scene to him. It was impossible
to make any judgment, or give any guess at what temper he
would receive it in, or what measures he would take upon it;
and if he should have so little government of himself as to make
it public, we easily foresaw that it would be the ruin of the
whole family, and expose my mother and me to the last degree;
and if at last he should take the advantage the law would give
him, he might put me away with disdain and leave me to sue
for the little portion that I had, and perhaps waste it all in the
suit, and then be a beggar; the children would be ruined too,
having no legal claim to any of his effects; and thus I should
see him, perhaps, in the arms of another wife in a few months,
and be myself the most miserable creature alive.

My mother was as sensible of this as I; and, upon the whole,
we knew not what to do. After some time we came to more
sober resolutions, but then it was with this misfortune too, that
my mother's opinion and mine were quite different from one
another, and indeed inconsistent with one another; for my
mother's opinion was, that I should bury the whole thing
entirely, and continue to live with him as my husband till some
other event should make the discovery of it more convenient;
and that in the meantime she would endeavour to reconcile us
together again, and restore our mutual comfort and family
peace; that we might lie as we used to do together, and so let
the whole matter remain a secret as close as death. 'For, child,'
says she, 'we are both undone if it comes out.'

To encourage me to this, she promised to make me easy in my
circumstances, as far as she was able, and to leave me what
she could at her death, secured for me separately from my
husband; so that if it should come out afterwards, I should not
be left destitute, but be able to stand on my own feet and
procure justice from him.

This proposal did not agree at all with my judgment of the
thing, though it was very fair and kind in my mother; but my
thoughts ran quite another way.

As to keeping the thing in our own breasts, and letting it all
remain as it was, I told her it was impossible; and I asked her
how she could think I could bear the thoughts of lying with
my own brother. In the next place, I told her that her being
alive was the only support of the discovery, and that while she
owned me for her child, and saw reason to be satisfied that I
was so, nobody else would doubt it; but that if she should die
before the discovery, I should be taken for an impudent creature
that had forged such a thing to go away from my husband, or
should be counted crazed and distracted. Then I told her how
he had threatened already to put me into a madhouse, and what
concern I had been in about it, and how that was the thing that
drove me to the necessity of discovering it to her as I had done.

From all which I told her, that I had, on the most serious
reflections I was able to make in the case, come to this resolution,
which I hoped she would like, as a medium between both, viz.
that she should use her endeavours with her son to give me
leave to go to England, as I had desired, and to furnish me with
a sufficient sum of money, either in goods along with me, or
in bills for my support there, all along suggesting that he might
one time or other think it proper to come over to me.

That when I was gone, she should then, in cold blood, and
after first obliging him in the solemnest manner possible to
secrecy, discover the case to him, doing it gradually, and as
her own discretion should guide her, so that he might not be
surprised with it, and fly out into any passions and excesses
on my account, or on hers; and that she should concern herself
to prevent his slighting the children, or marrying again, unless
he had a certain account of my being dead.

This was my scheme, and my reasons were good; I was really
alienated from him in the consequences of these things; indeed,
I mortally hated him as a husband, and it was impossible to
remove that riveted aversion I had to him. At the same time,
it being an unlawful, incestuous living, added to that aversion,
and though I had no great concern about it in point of
conscience, yet everything added to make cohabiting with him
the most nauseous thing to me in the world; and I think verily
it was come to such a height, that I could almost as willingly
have embraced a dog as have let him offer anything of that
kind to me, for which reason I could not bear the thoughts of
coming between the sheets with him. I cannot say that I was
right in point of policy in carrying it such a length, while at the
same time I did not resolve to discover the thing to him; but I
am giving an account of what was, not of what ought or ought
not to be.

In their directly opposite opinion to one another my mother
and I continued a long time, and it was impossible to reconcile
our judgments; many disputes we had about it, but we could
never either of us yield our own, or bring over the other.

I insisted on my aversion to lying with my own brother, and
she insisted upon its being impossible to bring him to consent
to my going from him to England; and in this uncertainty we
continued, not differing so as to quarrel, or anything like it,
but so as not to be able to resolve what we should do to make
up that terrible breach that was before us.

At last I resolved on a desperate course, and told my mother
my resolution, viz. that, in short, I would tell him of it myself.
My mother was frighted to the last degree at the very thoughts
of it; but I bid her be easy, told her I would do it gradually
and softly, and with all the art and good-humour I was mistress
of, and time it also as well as I could, taking him in good-humour
too. I told her I did not question but, if I could be hypocrite
enough to feign more affection to him than I really had, I should
succeed in all my design, and we might part by consent, and
with a good agreement, for I might live him well enough for
a brother, though I could not for a husband.

All this while he lay at my mother to find out, if possible, what
was the meaning of that dreadful expression of mine, as he
called it, which I mentioned before: namely, that I was not his
lawful wife, nor my children his legal children. My mother put
him off, told him she could bring me to no explanations, but
found there was something that disturbed me very much, and
she hoped she should get it out of me in time, and in the
meantime recommended to him earnestly to use me more
tenderly, and win me with his usual good carriage; told him
of his  terrifying and affrighting me with his threats of sending
me to a madhouse, and the like, and advised him not to make
a woman desperate on any account whatever.

He promised her to soften his behaviour, and bid her assure
me that he loved me as well as ever, and that he had so such
design as that of sending me to a madhouse, whatever he might
say in his passion; also he desired my mother to use the same
persuasions to me too, that our affections might be renewed,
and we might lie together in a good understanding as we used
to do.

I found the effects of this treaty presently. My husband's
conduct was immediately altered, and he was quite another
man to me; nothing could be kinder and more obliging than he
was to me upon all occasions; and I could do no less than
make some return to it, which I did as well as I could, but it
was but in an awkward manner at best, for nothing was more
frightful to me than his caresses, and the apprehensions of being
with child again by him was ready to throw me into fits; and
this made me see that there was an absolute necessity of breaking
the case to him without any more delay, which, however, I did
with all the caution and reserve imaginable.

He had continued his altered carriage to me near a month,
and we began to live a new kind of life with one another; and
could I have satisfied myself to have gone on with it, I believe
it might have continued as long as we had continued alive
together. One evening, as we were sitting and talking very
friendly together under a little awning, which served as an
arbour at the entrance from our house into the garden, he was
in a very pleasant, agreeable humour, and said abundance of
kind things to me relating to the pleasure of our present good
agreement, and the disorders of our past breach, and what a
satisfaction it was to him that we had room to hope we should
never have any more of it.

I fetched a deep sigh, and told him there was nobody in the
world could be more delighted than I was in the good agreement
we had always kept up, or more afflicted with the breach of it,
and should be so still; but I was sorry to tell him that there was
an unhappy circumstance in our case, which lay too close to
my heart, and which I knew not how to break to him, that
rendered my part of it very miserable, and took from me all the
comfort of the rest.

He importuned me to tell him what it was. I told him I could
not tell how to do it; that while it was concealed from him
I alone was unhappy, but if he knew it also, we should be both
so; and that, therefore, to keep him in the dark about it was
the kindest thing that I could do, and it was on that account
alone that I kept a secret from him, the very keeping of which,
I thought, would first or last be my destruction.

It is impossible to express his surprise at this relation, and the
double importunity which he used with me to discover it to him.
He told me I could not be called kind to him, nay, I could not
be faithful to him if I concealed it from him. I told him I thought
so too, and yet I could not do it. He went back to what I had
said before to him, and told me he hoped it did not relate to
what I had said in my passion, and that he had resolved to
forget all that as the effect of a rash, provoked spirit. I told
him I wished I could forget it all too, but that it was not to be
done, the impression was too deep, and I could not do it: it
was impossible.

He then told me he was resolved not to differ with me in
anything, and that therefore he would importune me no more
about it, resolving to acquiesce in whatever I did or said; only
begged I should then agree, that whatever it was, it should no
more interrupt our quiet and our mutual kindness.

This was the most provoking thing he could have said to me,
for I really wanted his further importunities, that I might be
prevailed with to bring out that which indeed it was like death
to me to conceal; so I answered him plainly that I could not
say I was glad not to be importuned, thought I could not tell
how to comply. 'But come, my dear,' said I, 'what conditions
will you make with me upon the opening this affair to you?'

'Any conditions in the world,' said he, 'that you can in reason
desire of me.'  'Well,' said I, 'come, give it me under your
hand, that if you do not find I am in any fault, or that I am
willingly concerned in the causes of the misfortune that is to
follow, you will not blame me, use me the worse, do my any
injury, or make me be the sufferer for that which is not my fault.'

'That,' says he, 'is the most reasonable demand in the world:
not to blame you for that which is not your fault. Give me a
pen and ink,' says he; so I ran in and fetched a pen, ink, and
paper, and he wrote the condition down in the very words I
had proposed it, and signed it with his name. "Well,' says  he,
'what is next, my dear?'

'Why,' says I, 'the next is, that you will not blame me for not
discovering the secret of it to you before I knew it.'

'Very just again,' says he; 'with all my heart'; so he wrote
down that also, and signed it.

'Well, my dear,' says I, 'then I have but one condition more
to make with you, and that is, that as there is nobody concerned
in it but you and I, you shall not discover it to any person in
the world, except your own mother; and that in all the measures
you shall take upon the discovery, as I am equally concerned
in it with you, though as innocent as yourself, you shall do
nothing in a passion, nothing to my prejudice or to your
mother's prejudice, without my knowledge and consent.'

This a little amazed him, and he wrote down the words distinctly,
but read them over and over before he signed them,
hesitating at them several times, and repeating them: "My
mother's prejudice! and your prejudice! What mysterious thing
can this be?'  However, at last he signed it.

'Well, says I, 'my dear, I'll ask you no more under your hand;
but as you are to hear the most unexpected and surprising thing
that perhaps ever befell any family in the world, I beg you to
promise me you will receive it with composure and a presence
of mind suitable to a man of sense.'

'I'll do my utmost,' says he, 'upon condition you will keep me
no longer in suspense, for you terrify me with all these
preliminaries.'

"Well, then,' says I, 'it is this: as I told you before in a heat,
that I was not your lawful wife, and that our children were not
legal children, so I must let you know now in calmness and in
kindness, but with affliction enough, that I am your own sister,
and you my own brother, and that we are both the children of
our mother now alive, and in the house, who is convinced of
the truth of it, in a manner not to be denied or contradicted.'

I saw him turn pale and look wild; and I said, 'Now remember
your promise, and receive it with presence of mind; for who
could have said more to prepare you for it than I have done?
However, I called a servant, and got him a little glass of rum
(which is the usual dram of that country), for he was just
fainting away. When he was a little recovered, I said to him,
'This story, you may be sure, requires a long explanation, and
therefore, have patience and compose your mind to hear it out,
and I'll make it as short as I can'; and with this, I told him
what I thought was needful of the fact, and particularly how
my mother came to discover it to me, as above. 'And now,
my dear,' says I, 'you will see reason for my capitulations,
and that I neither have been the cause of this matter, nor could
be so, and that I could know nothing of it before now.'

'I am fully satisfied of that,' says he, 'but 'tis a dreadful surprise
to me; however, I know a remedy for it all, and a remedy
that shall put an end to your difficulties, without your going to
England.'  'That would be strange,' said I, 'as all the rest.'  
'No, no,' says he, 'I'll make it easy; there's nobody in the way
of it but myself.'  He looked a little disordered when he said
this, but I did not apprehend anything from it at that time,
believing, as it used to be said, that they who do those things
never talk of them, or that they who talk of such things never
do them.

But things were not come to their height with him, and I
observed he became pensive and melancholy; and in a word,
as I thought, a little distempered in his head. I endeavoured
to talk him into temper, and to reason him into a kind of scheme
for our government in the affair, and sometimes he would be
well, and talk with some courage about it; but the weight of
it lay too heavy upon his thoughts, and, in short, it went so far
that he made attempts upon himself, and in one of them had
actually strangled himself and had not his mother come into
the room in the very moment, he had died; but with the help
of a Negro servant she cut him down and recovered him.

Things were now come to a lamentable height in the family.
My pity for him now began to revive that affection which at
first I really had for him, and I endeavoured sincerely, by all
the kind carriage I could, to make up the breach; but, in short,
it had gotten too great a head, it preyed upon his spirits, and
it threw him into a long, lingering consumption, though it
happened not to be mortal. In this distress I did not know
what to do, as his life was apparently declining, and I might
perhaps have married again there, very much to my advantage;
it had been certainly my business to have stayed in the country,
but my mind was restless too, and uneasy; I hankered after
coming to England, and nothing would satisfy me without it.

In short, by an unwearied importunity, my husband, who was
apparently decaying, as I observed, was at last prevailed with;
and so my own fate pushing me on, the way was made clear
for me, and my mother concurring, I obtained a very good
cargo for my coming to England.

When I parted with my brother (for such I am now to call
him), we agreed that after I arrived he should pretend to have
an account that I was dead in England, and so might marry
again when he would. He promised, and engaged to me to
correspond with me as a sister, and to assist and support me
as long as I lived; and that if he died before me, he would leave
sufficient to his mother to take care of me still, in the name of
asister, and he was in some respects careful of me, when he
heard of me; but it was so oddly managed that I felt the
disappointments very sensibly afterwards, as you shall hear in
its time.

I came away for England in the month of August, after I had
been eight years in that country; and now a new scene of  
misfortunes attended me, which perhaps few women have
gone through the life of.

We had an indifferent good voyage till we came just upon the
coast of England, and where we arrived in two-and-thirty days,
but were then ruffled with two or three storms, one of which
drove us away to the coast of Ireland, and we put in at Kinsdale.
We remained there about thirteen days, got some refreshment
on shore, and put to sea again, though we met with very bad
weather again, in which the ship sprung her mainmast, as they
called it, for I knew not what they meant. But we got at last
into Milford Haven, in Wales, where, though it was remote
from our port, yet having my foot safe upon the firm ground
of my native country, the isle of Britain, I resolved to venture
it no more upon the waters, which had been so terrible to me;
so getting my clothes and money on shore, with my bills of
loading and other papers, I resolved to come for London, and
leave the ship to get to her port as she could; the port whither
she was bound was to Bristol, where my brother's chief
correspondent lived.

I got to London in about three weeks, where I heard a little
while after that the ship was arrived in Bristol, but at the same
time had the misfortune to know that by the violent weather
she had been in, and the breaking of her mainmast, she had
great damage on board, and that a great part of her cargo was
spoiled.

I had now a new scene of life upon my hands, and a dreadful
appearance it had. I was come away with a kind of final
farewell. What I brought with me was indeed considerable,
had it come safe, and by the help of it, I might have married
again tolerably well; but as it was, I was reduced to between
two or three hundred pounds in the whole, and this without
any hope of recruit. I was entirely without friends, nay, even
so much as without acquaintance, for I found it was absolutely
necessary not to revive former acquaintances; and as for my
subtle friend that set me up formerly for a fortune, she was
dead, and her husband also; as I was informed, upon sending
a person unknown to inquire.

The looking after my cargo of goods soon after obliged me to
take a journey to Bristol, and during my attendance upon that
affair I took the diversion of going to the Bath, for as I was
still far from being old, so my humour, which was always gay,
continued so to an extreme; and being now, as it were, a
woman of fortune though I was a woman without a fortune,
I expected something or other might happen in my way that
might mend my circumstances, as had been my case before.

The Bath is a place of gallantry enough; expensive, and full
of snares. I went thither, indeed, in the view of taking anything
that might offer, but I must do myself justice, as to protest I
knew nothing amiss; I meant nothing but in an honest way, nor
had I any thoughts about me at first that looked the way which
afterwards I suffered them to be guided.

Here I stayed the whole latter season, as it is called there,
and contracted some unhappy acquaintances, which rather
prompted the follies I fell afterwards into than fortified me
against them. I lived pleasantly enough, kept good company,
that is to say, gay, fine company; but had the discouragement
to find this way of living sunk me exceedingly, and that as I
had no settled income, so spending upon the main stock was
but a certain kind of bleeding to death; and this gave me many
sad reflections in the interval of my other thoughts. However,
I shook them off, and still flattered myself that something or
other might offer for my advantage.

But I was in the wrong place for it. I was not now at Redriff,
where, if I had set myself tolerably up, some honest sea captain
or other might have talked with me upon the honourable terms
of matrimony; but I was at the Bath, where men find a mistress
sometimes, but very rarely look for a wife; and consequently
all the particular acquaintances a woman can expect to make
there must have some tendency that way.

I had spent the first season well enough; for though I had
contracted some acquaintance with a gentleman who came to
the Bath for his diversion, yet I had entered into no felonious
treaty, as it might be called. I had resisted some casual offers
of gallantry, and had managed that way well enough. I was
not wicked enough to come into the crime for the mere vice
of it, and I had no extraordinary offers made me that tempted
me with the main thing which I wanted.

However, I went this length the first season, viz. I contracted
an acquaintance with a woman in whose house I lodged, who,
though she did not keep an ill house, as we call it, yet had none
of the best principles in herself. I had on all occasions behaved
myself so well as not to get the least slur upon my reputation
on any account whatever, and all the men that I had conversed
with were of so good reputation that I had not given the least
reflection by conversing with them; nor did any of them seem
to think there was room for a wicked correspondence, if they
had any of them offered it; yet there was one gentleman, as
above, who always singled me out for the diversion of my
company, as he called it, which, as he was pleased to say, was
very agreeable to him, but at that time there was no more in it.

I had many melancholy hours at the Bath after the company
was gone; for though I went to Bristol sometime for the
disposing my effects, and for recruits of money, yet I chose to
come back to Bath for my residence, because being on good
terms with the woman in whose house I lodged in the summer,
I found that during the winter I lived rather cheaper there than
I could do anywhere else. Here, I say, I passed the winter as
heavily as I had passed the autumn cheerfully; but having
contracted a nearer intimacy with the said woman in whose
house I lodged, I could not avoid communicating to her
something of what lay hardest upon my mind and particularly
the narrowness of my circumstances, and the loss of my fortune
by the damage of my goods at sea. I told her also, that I had
a mother and a brother in Virginia in good circumstances; and
as I had really written back to my mother in particular to
represent my condition, and the great loss I had received,
which indeed came to almost #500, so I did not fail to let my
new friend know that I expected a supply from thence, and so
indeed I did; and as the ships went from Bristol to York River,
in Virginia, and back again generally in less time from London,
and that my brother corresponded chiefly at Bristol, I thought
it was much better for me to wait here for my returns than to
go to London, where also I had not the least acquaintance.

My new friend appeared sensibly affected with my condition,
and indeed was so very kind as to reduce the rate of my living
with her to so low a price during the winter, that she convinced
me she got nothing by me; and as for lodging, during the winter
I paid nothing at all.

When the spring season came on, she continued to be as king
to me as she could, and I lodged with her for a time, till it was
found necessary to do otherwise. She had some persons of
character that frequently lodged in her house, and in particular
the gentleman who, as I said, singled me out for his companion
the winter before; and he came down again with another
gentleman in his company and two servants, and lodged in the
same house. I suspected that my landlady had invited him
thither, letting him know that I was still with her; but she denied
it, and protested to me that she did not, and he said the same.

In a word, this gentleman came down and continued to single
me out for his peculiar confidence as well as conversation.
He was a complete gentleman, that must be confessed, and
his company was very agreeable to me, as mine, if I might
believe him, was to him. He made no professions to be but
of an extraordinary respect, and he had such an opinion of my
virtue, that, as he often professed, he believed if he should offer
anything else, I should reject him with contempt. He soon
understood from me that I was a widow; that I had arrived at
Bristol from Virginia by the last ships; and that I waited at Bath
till the next Virginia fleet should arrive, by which I expected
considerable effects. I understood by him, and by others of
him, that he had a wife, but that the lady was distempered in
her head, and was under the conduct of her own relations,
which he consented to, to avoid any reflections that might (as
was not unusual in such cases) be cast on him for mismanaging
her cure; and in the meantime he came to the Bath to divert his
thoughts from the disturbance of such a melancholy circumstance
as that was.

My landlady, who of her own accord encouraged the
correspondence on all occasions, gave me an advantageous
character of him, as a man of honour and of virtue, as well
as of great estate. And indeed I had a great deal of reason to
say so of him too; for though we lodged both on a floor, and
he had frequently come into my chamber, even when I was in
bed, and I also into his when he was in bed, yet he never offered
anything to me further than a kiss, or so much as solicited me
to anything till long after, as you shall hear.

I frequently took notice to my landlady of his exceeding
modesty, and she again used to tell me, she believed it was so
from the beginning; however, she used to tell me that she
thought I ought to expect some gratification from him for my
company, for indeed he did, as it were, engross me, and I was
seldom from him. I told her I had not given him the least
occasion to think I wanted it, or that I would accept of it from
him. She told me she would take that part upon her, and she
did so, and managed it so dexterously, that the first time we
were together alone, after she had talked with him, he began
to inquire a little into my circumstances, as how I had subsisted
myself since I came on shore, and whether I did not want money.
I stood off very boldly. I told him that though my cargo of
tobacco was damaged, yet that it was not quite lost; that the
merchant I had been consigned to had so honestly managed
for me that I had not wanted, and that I hoped, with frugal
management, I should make it hold out till more would come,
which I expected by the next fleet; that in the meantime I had
retrenched my expenses, and whereas I kept a maid last season,
now I lived without; and whereas I had a chamber and a
dining-room then on the first floor, as he knew, I now had but
one room, two pair of stairs, and the like. 'But I live,' said I,
'as well satisfied now as I did then'; adding, that his company
had been a means to make me live much more cheerfully than
otherwise I should have done, for which I was much obliged
to him; and so I put off all room for any offer for the present.
However, it was not long before he attacked me again, and
told me he found that I was backward to trust him with the
secret of my circumstances, which he was sorry for; assuring
me that he inquired into it with no design to satisfy his own
curiosity, but merely to assist me, if there was any occasion;
but since I would not own myself to stand in need of any
assistance, he had but one thing more to desire of me, and that
was, that I would promise him that when I was any way straitened,
or like to be so, I would frankly tell him of it, and that I would
make use of him with the same freedom that he made the offer;
adding, that I should always find I had a true friend, though
perhaps I was afraid to trust him.

I omitted nothing that was fit to be said by one infinitely
obliged, to let him know that I had a due sense of his kindness;
and indeed from that time I did not appear so much reserved
to him as I had done before, though still within the bounds of
the strictest virtue on both sides; but how free soever our
conversation was, I could not arrive to that sort of freedom
which he desired, viz. to tell him I wanted money, though I
was secretly very glad of his offer.

Some weeks passed after this, and still I never asked him for
money; when my landlady, a cunning creature, who had often
pressed me to it, but found that I could not do it, makes a
story of her own inventing, and comes in bluntly to me when
we were together. 'Oh, widow!' says she, 'I have bad news
to tell you this morning.'  'What is that?' said I; 'are the
Virginia ships taken by the French?'--for that was my fear.
'No, no,' says she, 'but the man you sent to Bristol yesterday
for money is come back, and says he has brought none.'

Now I could by no means like her project; I though it looked
too much like prompting him, which indeed he did not want,
and I clearly that I should lose nothing by being backward to
ask, so I took her up short. 'I can't image why he should say
so to you,' said I, 'for I assure you he brought me all the
money I sent him for, and here it is,' said I (pulling out my
purse with about twelve guineas in it); and added, 'I intend
you shall have most of it by and by.'

He seemed distasted a little at her talking as she did at first,
as well as I, taking it, as I fancied he would, as something
forward of her; but when he saw me give such an answer, he
came immediately to himself again. The next morning we
talked of it again, when I found he was fully satisfied, and,
smiling, said he hoped I would not want money and not tell
him of it, and that I had promised him otherwise. I told him
I had been very much dissatisfied at my landlady's talking so
publicly the day before of  what she had nothing to do with;
but I supposed she wanted what I owed her, which was about
eight guineas, which I had resolved to give her, and had
accordingly given it her the same night she talked so foolishly.

He was in a might good humour when he heard me say I had
paid her, and it went off into some other discourse at that time.
But the next morning, he having heard me up about my room
before him, he called to me, and I answering, he asked me to
come into his chamber. He was in bed when I came in, and
he made me come and sit down on his bedside, for he said he
had something to say to me which was of some moment.
After some very kind expressions, he asked me if I would be
very honest to him, and give a sincere answer to one thing he
would desire of me. After some little cavil at the word 'sincere,'
and asking him if I had ever given him any answers which were
not sincere, I promised him I would. Why, then, his request
was, he said, to let him see my purse. I immediately put my
hand into my pocket, and, laughing to him, pulled it out, and
there was in it three guineas and a half. Then he asked me if
there was all the money I had. I told him No, laughing again,
not by a great deal.

Well, then, he said, he would have me promise to go and
fetch him all the money I had, every farthing. I told him I
would, and I went into my chamber and fetched him a little
private drawer, where I had about six guineas more, and some
silver, and threw it all down upon the bed, and told him there
was all my wealth, honestly to a shilling. He looked a little
at it, but did not tell it, and huddled it all into the drawer again,
and then reaching his pocket, pulled out a key, and bade me
open a little walnut-tree box he had upon the table, and bring
him such a drawer, which I did. In which drawer there was a
great deal of money in gold, I believe near two hundred guineas,
but I knew not how much. He took the drawer, and taking my
hand, made me put it in and take a whole handful. I was
backward at that, but he held my hand hard in his hand, and
put it into the drawer, and made me take out as many guineas
almost as I could well take up at once.

When I had done so, he made me put them into my lap,
and took my little drawer, and poured out all my money among
his, and bade me get me gone, and carry it all home into my
own chamber.

I relate this story the more particularly because of the
good-humour there was in it, and to show the temper with
which we conversed. It was not long after this but he began
every day to find fault with my clothes, with my laces and
headdresses, and, in a word, pressed me to buy better; which,
by the way, I was willing enough to do, though I did not seem
to be so, for I loved nothing in the world better than fine clothes.
I told him I must housewife the money he had lent me, or else
I should not be able to pay him again. He then told me, in a
few words, that as he had a sincere respect for me, and knew
my circumstances, he had not lent me that money, but given
it me, and that he thought I had merited it from him by giving
him my company so entirely as I had done. After this he made
me take a maid, and keep house, and his friend that come with
him to Bath being gone, he obliged me to diet him, which I did
very willingly, believing, as it appeared, that I should lose
nothing by it, not did the woman of the house fail to find her
account in it too.

We had lived thus near three months, when the company
beginning to wear away at the Bath, he talked of going away,
and fain he would have me to go to London with him. I was
not very easy in that proposal, not knowing what posture I
was to live in there, or how he might use me. But while this
was in debate he fell very sick; he had gone out to a place in  
Somersetshire, called Shepton, where he had some business
and was there taken very ill, and so ill that he could not travel;
so he sent his man back to Bath, to beg me that I would hire
a coach and come over to him. Before he went, he had left
all his money and other things of value with me, and what to
do with them I did not know, but I secured them as well as I
could, and locked up the lodgings and went to him, where I
found him very ill indeed; however, I persuaded him to be
carried in a litter to the Bath, where there was more help and
better advice to be had.

He consented, and I brought him to the Bath, which was about
fifteen miles, as I remember. Here he continued very ill of a
fever, and kept his bed five weeks, all which time I nursed him
and tended him myself, as much and as carefully as if I had
been his wife; indeed, if I had been his wife I could not have
done more. I sat up with him so much and so often, that at
last, indeed, he would not let me sit up any longer, and then I
got a pallet-bed into his room, and lay in it just at his bed's
feet.

I was indeed sensibly affected with his condition, and with the
apprehension of losing such a friend as he was, and was like to
be to me, and I used to sit and cry by him many hours together.
However, at last he grew better, and gave hopes that he would
recover, as indeed he did, though very slowly.

Were it otherwise than what I am going to say, I should not
be backward to disclose it, as it is apparent I have done in
other cases in this account; but I affirm, that through all this
conversation, abating the freedom of coming into the chamber
when I or he was in bed, and abating the necessary offices of
attending him night and day when he was sick, there had not
passed the least immodest word or action between us. Oh
that it had been so to the last!

After some time he gathered strength and grew well apace,
and I would have removed my pallet-bed, but he would not
let me, till he was able to venture himself without anybody to
sit up with him, and then I removed to my own chamber.

He took many occasions to express his sense of my tenderness
and concern for him; and when he grew quite well, he made me
a present of fifty guineas for my care and, as he called it, for
hazarding my life to save his.

And now he made deep protestations of a sincere inviolable
affection for me, but all along attested it to be with the utmost
reserve for my virtue and his own. I told him I was fully
satisfied of it. He carried it that length that he protested to me,
that if he was naked in bed with me, he would as sacredly
preserve my virtue as he would defend if if I was assaulted by
a ravisher. I believed him, and told him I did so; but this did
not satisfy him, he would, he said, wait for some opportunity
to give me an undoubted testimony of it.

It was a great while after this that I had occasion, on my own
business, to go to Bristol, upon which he hired me a coach,
and would go with me, and did so; and now indeed our intimacy
increased. From Bristol he carried me to Gloucester, which
was merely a journey of pleasure, to take the air; and here it
was our hap to have no lodging in the inn but in one large
chamber with two beds in it. The master of the house going
up with us to show his rooms, and coming into that room,
said very frankly to him, 'Sir, it is none of my business to inquire
whether the lady be your spouse or no, but if not, you may lie
as honestly in these two beds as if you were in two chambers,'
and with that he pulls a great curtain which drew quite across
the room and effectually divided the beds. 'Well,' says my
friend, very readily, 'these beds will do, and as for the rest, we
are too near akin to lie together, though we may lodge near
one another'; and this put an honest face on the thing too.
When we came to go to bed, he decently went out of the room
till I was in bed, and then went to bed in the bed on his own
side of the room, but lay there talking to me a great while.

At last, repeating his usual saying, that he could lie naked in
the bed with me and not offer me the least injury, he starts out
of his bed. 'And now, my dear,' says he, 'you shall see how
just I will be to you, and that I can keep my word,' and away
he comes to my bed.

I resisted a little, but I must confess I should not have resisted
him much if he had not made those promises at all; so after a
little struggle, as I said, I lay still and let him come to bed.
When he was there he took me in his arms, and so I lay all
night with him, but he had no more to do with me, or offered
anything to me, other than embracing me, as I say, in his arms,
no, not the whole night, but rose up and dressed him in the
morning, and left me as innocent for him as I was the day I
was born.

This was a surprising thing to me, and perhaps may be so to
others, who know how the laws of nature work; for he was a
strong, vigorous, brisk person; nor did he act thus on a principle
of religion at all, but of mere affection; insisting on it, that
though I was to him to most agreeable woman in the world,
yet, because he loved me, he could not injure me.

I own it was a noble principle, but as it was what I never
understood before, so it was to me perfectly amazing. We
traveled the rest of the journey as we did before, and came
back to the Bath, where, as he had opportunity to come to
me when he would, he often repeated the moderation, and I
frequently lay with him, and he with me, and although all the
familiarities between man and wife were common to us, yet
he never once offered to go any farther, and he valued himself
much upon it. I do not say that I was so wholly pleased with
it as he thought I was, for I own much wickeder than he, as
you shall hear presently.

We lived thus near two years, only with this exception, that
he went three times to London in that time, and once he
continued there four months; but, to do him justice, he always
supplied me with money to subsist me very handsomely.

Had we continued thus, I confess we had had much to boast
of; but as wise men say, it is ill venturing too near the brink of
a command, so we found it; and here again I must do him the
justice to own that the first breach was not on his part. It was
one night that we were in bed together warm and merry, and
having drunk, I think, a little more wine that night, both of us,
than usual, although not in the least to disorder either of us,
when, after some other follies which I cannot name, and being
clasped close in his arms, I told him (I repeat it with shame
and horror of soul) that I could find in my heart to discharge
him of his engagement for one night and no more.

He took me at my word immediately, and after that there was
no resisting him; neither indeed had I any mind to resist him
any more, let what would come of it.

Thus the government of our virtue was broken, and I
exchanged the place of friend for that unmusical, harsh-sounding
title of whore. In the morning we were both at our penitentials;
I cried very heartily, he expressed himself very sorry; but that
was all either of us could do at that time, and the way being
thus cleared, and the bars of virtue and conscience thus removed,
we had the less difficult afterwards to struggle with.

It was but a dull kind of conversation that we had together
for all the rest of that week; I looked on him with blushes, and
every now and then started that melancholy objection, 'What
if I should be with child now? What will become of me then?'  
He encouraged me by telling me, that as long as I was true to
him, he would be so to me; and since it was gone such a length
(which indeed he never intended), yet if I was with child, he
would take care of that, and of me too. This hardened us both.
I assured him if I was with child, I would die for want of a
midwife rather than name him as the father of it; and he assured
me I should never want if I should be with child. These mutual
assurances hardened us in the thing, and after this we repeated
the crime as often as we pleased, till at length, as I had feared,
so it came to pass, and I was indeed with child.

After I was sure it was so, and I had satisfied him of it too,
we began to think of taking measures for the managing it, and
I proposed trusting the secret to my landlady, and asking her
advice, which he agreed to. My landlady, a woman (as I found)
used to such things, made light of it; she said she knew it would
come to that at last, and made us very merry about it. As I said
above, we found her an experienced old lady at such work; she
undertook everything, engaged to procure a midwife and a nurse,
to satisfy all inquiries, and bring us off with reputation, and she
did so very dexterously indeed.

When I grew near my time she desired my gentleman to go
away to London, or make as if he did so. When he was gone,
she acquainted the parish officers that there was a lady ready
to lie in at her house, but that she knew her husband very well,
and gave them, as she pretended, an account of his name, which
she called Sir Walter Cleve; telling them he was a very worthy
gentleman, and that she would answer for all inquiries, and the
like. This satisfied the parish officers presently, and I lay in
with as much credit as I could have done if I had really been
my Lady Cleve, and was assisted in my travail by three or four
of the best citizens' wives of Bath who lived in the neighbourhood,
which, however, made me a little the more expensive to him.
I often expressed my concern to him about it, but he bid me not
be concerned at it.

As he had furnished me very sufficiently with money for the
extraordinary expenses of my lying in, I had everything very
handsome about me, but did not affect to be gay or extravagant
neither; besides, knowing my own circumstances, and knowing
the world as I had done, and that such kind of things do not
often last long, I took care to lay up as much money as I could
for a wet day, as I called it; making him believe it was all spent
upon the extraordinary appearance of things in my lying in.

By this means, and including what he had given me as above,
I had at the end of my lying in about two hundred guineas by
me, including also what was left of my own.

I was brought to bed of a fine boy indeed, and a charming
child it was; and when he heard of it he wrote me a very kind,
obliging letter about it, and then told me, he thought it would
look better for me to come away for London as soon as I was
up and well; that he had provided apartments for me at
Hammersmith, as if I came thither only from London; and that
after a little while I should go back to the Bath, and he would
go with me.

I liked this offer very well, and accordingly hired a coach on
purpose, and taking my child, and a wet-nurse to tend and
suckle it, and a maid-servant with me, away I went for London.

He met me at Reading in his own chariot, and taking me into
that, left the servant and the child in the hired coach, and so
he brought me to my new lodgings at Hammersmith; with
which I had abundance of reason to be very well pleased, for
they were very handsome rooms, and I was very well
accommodated.

And now I was indeed in the height of what I might call my
prosperity, and I wanted nothing but to be a wife, which,
however, could not be in this case, there was no room for it;
and therefore on all occasions I studied to save what I could,
as I have said above, against a time of scarcity, knowing well
enough that such things as these do not always continue; that
men that keep mistresses often change them, grow weary of
them, or jealous of them, or something or other happens to
make them withdraw their bounty; and sometimes the ladies
that are thus well used are not careful by a prudent conduct
to preserve the esteem of their persons, or the nice article of
their fidelity, and then they are justly cast off with contempt.

But I was secured in this point, for as I had no inclination
to change, so I had no manner of acquaintance in the whole
house, and so no temptation to look any farther. I kept no
company but in the family when I lodged, and with the
clergyman's lady at next door; so that when he was absent I
visited nobody, nor did he every find me out of my chamber
or parlour whenever he came down; if I went anywhere to
take the air, it was always with him.

The living in this manner with him, and his with me, was
certainly the most undesigned thing in the world; he often
protested to me, that when he became first acquainted with
me, and even to the very night when we first broke in upon
our rules, he never had the least design of lying with me; that
he always had a sincere affection for me, but not the least real
inclination to do what he had done. I assured him I never
suspected him; that if I had I should not so easily have yielded
to the freedom which brought it on, but that it was all a surprise,
and was owing to the accident of our having yielded too far to
our mutual inclinations that night; and indeed I have often
observed since, and leave it as a caution to the readers of this
story, that we ought to be cautious of gratifying our inclinations
in loose and lewd freedoms, lest we find our resolutions of
virtue fail us in the junction when their assistance should be
most necessary.

It is true, and I have confessed it before, that from the first
hour I began to converse with him, I resolved to let him lie
with me, if he offered it; but it was because I wanted his help
and assistance, and I knew no other way of securing him than
that. But when were that night together, and, as I have said,
had gone such a length, I found my weakness; the inclination
was not to be resisted, but I was obliged to yield up all even
before he asked it.

However, he was so just to me that he never upbraided me
with that; nor did he ever express the least dislike of my
conduct on any other occasion, but always protested he was
as much delighted with my company as he was the first hour
we came together: I mean, came together as bedfellows.

It is true that he had no wife, that is to say, she was as no
wife to him, and so I was in no danger that way, but the just
reflections of conscience oftentimes snatch a man, especially
a man of sense, from the arms of a mistress, as it did him at
last, though on another occasion.

On the other hand, though I was not without secret reproaches
of my own conscience for the life I led, and that even in the
greatest height of the satisfaction I ever took, yet I  had the
terrible prospect of poverty and starving, which lay on me as
a frightful spectre, so that there was no looking behind me.
But as poverty brought me into it, so fear of poverty kept me
in it, and I frequently resolved to leave it quite off, if I could
but come to lay up money enough to maintain me. But these
were thoughts of no weight, and whenever he came to me they
vanished; for his company was so delightful, that there was no
being melancholy when he was there; the reflections were all
the subject of those hours when I was alone.

I lived six years in this happy but unhappy condition, in which
time I brought him three children, but only the first of them
lived; and though I removed twice in those six years, yet I came
back the sixth year to my first lodgings at Hammersmith.
Here it was that I was one morning surprised with a kind but
melancholy letter from my gentleman, intimating that he was
very ill, and was afraid he should have another fit of sickness,
but that his wife's relations being in the house with him, it
would not be practicable to have me with him, which, however,
he expressed his great dissatisfaction in, and that he wished I
could be allowed to tend and nurse him as I did before.

I was very much concerned at this account, and was very
impatient to know how it was with him. I waited a fortnight
or thereabouts, and heard nothing, which surprised me, and I
began to be very uneasy indeed. I think, I may say, that for
the next fortnight I was near to distracted. It was my particular
difficulty that I did not know directly when he was; for I
understood at first he was in the lodgings of his wife's mother;
but having removed myself to London, I soon found, by the
help of the direction I had for writing my letters to him, how
to inquire after him, and there I found that he was at a house
in Bloomsbury, whither he had, a little before he fell sick,
removed his whole family; and that his wife and wife's mother
were in the same house, though the wife was not suffered to
know that she was in the same house with her husband.

Here I also soon understood that he was at the last extremity,
which made me almost at the last extremity too, to have a true
account. One night I had the curiosity to disguise myself like
a servant-maid, in a round cap and straw hat, and went to the
door, as sent by a lady of his neighbourhood, where he lived
before, and giving master and mistress's service, I said I was
sent to know how Mr. ---- did, and how he had rested that night.
In delivering this message I got the opportunity I desired; for,
speaking with one of the maids, I held a long gossip's tale with
her, and had all the particulars of his illness, which I found was
a pleurisy, attended with a cough and a fever. She told me also
who was in the house, and how his wife was, who, by her
relation, they were in some hopes might recover her understanding;
but as to the gentleman himself, in short she told me the doctors
said there was very little hopes of him, that in the morning
they thought he had been dying, and that he was but little better
then, for they did not expect that he could live over the next
night.

This was heavy news for me, and I began now to see an end
of my prosperity, and to see also that it was very well I had
played to good housewife, and secured or saved something
while he was alive, for that now I had no view of my own
living before me.

It lay very heavy upon my mind, too, that I had a son, a fine
lovely boy, about five years old, and no provision made for it,
at least that I knew of. With these considerations, and a sad
heart, I went home that evening, and began to cast with myself
how I should live, and in what manner to bestow myself, for
the residue of my life.

You may be sure I could not rest without inquiring again very
quickly what was become of him; and not venturing to go
myself, I sent several sham messengers, till after a fortnight's
waiting longer, I found that there was hopes of his life, though
he was still very ill; then I abated my sending any more to the
house, and in some time after I learned in the neighbourhood
that he was about house, and then that he was abroad again.

I made no doubt then but that I should soon hear of him,
and began to comfort myself with my circumstances being, as
I thought, recovered. I waited a week, and two weeks, and
with much surprise and amazement I waited near two months
and heard nothing, but that, being recovered, he was gone into
the country for the air, and for the better recovery after his
distemper. After this it was yet two months more, and then I
understood he was come to his city house again, but still I
heard nothing from him.

I had written several letters for him, and directed them as
usual, and found two or three of them had been called for, but
not the rest. I wrote again in a more pressing manner than
ever, and in one of them let him know, that I must be forced
to wait on him myself, representing my circumstances, the rent
of lodgings to pay, and the provision for the child wanting, and
my own deplorable condition, destitute of subsistence for his
most solemn engagement to take care of and provide for me.
I took a copy of this letter, and finding it lay at the house near
a month and was not called for, I found means to have the copy
of it put into his own hands at a coffee-house, where I had by
inquiry found he used to go.

This letter forced an answer from him, by which, though I
found I was to be abandoned, yet I found he had sent a letter
to me some time before, desiring me to go down to the Bath
again. Its contents I shall come to presently.

It is true that sick-beds are the time when such correspondences
as this are looked on with different countenances, and seen
with other eyes than we saw them with, or than they appeared
with before. My lover had been at the gates of death, and at
the very brink of eternity; and, it seems, had been struck with
a due remorse, and with sad reflections upon his past life of
gallantry and levity; and among the rest, criminal correspondence
with me, which was neither more nor less than a long-continued
life of adultery, and represented itself as it really was, not as
it had been formerly thought by him to be, and he looked upon
it now with a just and religious abhorrence.

I cannot but observe also, and leave it for the direction of my
sex in such cases of pleasure, that whenever sincere repentance
succeeds such a crime as this, there never fails to attend a
hatred of the object; and the more the affection might seem to
be before, the hatred will be the more in proportion. It will
always be so, indeed it can be no otherwise; for there cannot
be a true and sincere abhorrence of the offence, and the love
to the cause of it remain; there will, with an abhorrence of the
sin, be found a detestation of the fellow-sinner; you can expect
no other.

I found it so here, though good manners and justice in this
gentleman kept him from carrying it on to any extreme but the
short history of his part in this affair was thus: he perceived
by my last letter, and by all the rest, which he went for after,
that I was not gone to Bath, that his first letter had not come
to my hand; upon which he write me this following:--

'MADAM,--I am surprised that my letter, dated the 8th of last
month, did not come to your hand; I give you my word it was
delivered at your lodgings, and to the hands of your maid.

'I need not acquaint you with what has been my condition
for some time past; and how, having been at the edge of the
grave, I am, by the unexpected and undeserved mercy of
Heaven, restored again. In the condition I have been in, it
cannot be strange to you that our unhappy correspondence
had not been the least of the burthens which lay upon my
conscience. I need say no more; those things that must be
repented of, must be also reformed.

I wish you would thing of going back to the Bath. I enclose
you here a bill for #50 for clearing yourself at your lodgings,
and carrying you down, and hope it will be no surprise to you
to add, that on this account only, and not for any offence given
me on your side, I can see you no more. I will take due care
of the child; leave him where he is, or take him with you, as
you please. I wish you the like reflections, and that they may
be to your advantage.--I am,' etc.

I was struck with this letter as with a thousand wounds, such
as I cannot describe; the reproaches of my own conscience were
such as I cannot express, for I was not blind to my own crime;
and I reflected that I might with less offence have continued
with my brother, and lived with him as a wife, since there was
no crime in our marriage on that score, neither of us knowing it.

But I never once reflected that I was all this while a married
woman, a wife to Mr. ---- the linen-draper, who, though he
had left me by the necessity of his circumstances, had no power
to discharge me from the marriage contract which was between
us, or to give me a legal liberty to marry again; so that I had
been no less than a whore and an adulteress all this while. I
then reproached myself with the liberties I had taken, and how
I had been a snare to this gentleman, and that indeed I was
principal in the crime; that now he was mercifully snatched out
of the gulf by a convincing work upon his mind, but that I was
left as if I was forsaken of God's grace, and abandoned by
Heaven to a continuing in my wickedness.

Under these reflections I continued very pensive and sad for
near month, and did not go down to the Bath, having no
inclination to be with the woman whom I was with before;
lest, as I thought, she should prompt me to some wicked
course of life again, as she had done; and besides, I was very
loth she should know I was cast off as above.

And now I was greatly perplexed about my little boy. It was
death to me to part with the child, and yet when I considered
the danger of being one time or other left with him to keep
without a maintenance to support him, I then resolved to leave
him where he was; but then I concluded also to be near him
myself too, that I then might have the satisfaction of seeing
him, without the care of providing for him.

I sent my gentleman a short letter, therefore, that I had obeyed
his orders in all things but that of going back to the Bath,
which I could not think of for many reasons; that however
parting from him was a wound to me that I could never recover,
yet that I was fully satisfied his reflections were just, and would
be very far from desiring to obstruct his reformation or repentance.

Then I represented my own circumstances to him in the most
moving terms that I was able. I told him that those unhappy
distresses which first moved him to a generous and an honest
friendship for me, would, I hope, move him to a little concern
for me now, though the criminal part of our correspondence,
which I believed neither of us intended to fall into at the time,
was broken off; that I desired to repent as sincerely as he had
done, but entreated him to put me in some condition that I
might not be exposed to the temptations which the devil never
fails to excite us to from the frightful prospect of poverty and
distress; and if he had the least apprehensions of my being
troublesome to him, I begged he would put me in a posture
to go back to my mother in Virginia, from when he knew I
came, and that would put an end to all his fears on that account.
I concluded, that if he would send me #50 more to facilitate
my going away, I would send him back a general release, and
would promise never to disturb him more with any importunities;
unless it was to hear of the well-doing of the child, whom, if
I found my mother living and my circumstances able, I would
send for to come over to me, and take him also effectually off
his hands.

This was indeed all a cheat thus far, viz. that I had no intention
to go to Virginia, a the account of my former affairs there may
convince anybody of; but the business was to get this last #50
of him, if possible, knowing well enough it would be the last
penny I was ever to expect.

However, the argument I used, namely, of giving him a general
release, and never troubling him any more, prevailed effectually
with him, and he sent me a bill for the money by a person who
brought with him a general release for me to sign, and which
I frankly signed, and received the money; and thus, though full
sore against my will, a final end was put to this affair.

And here I cannot but reflect upon the unhappy consequence
of too great freedoms between persons stated as we were,
upon the pretence of innocent intentions, love of friendship,
and the like; for the flesh has generally so great a share in those
friendships, that is great odds but inclination prevails at last
over the most solemn resolutions; and that vice breaks in at
the breaches of decency, which really innocent friendship ought
to preserve with the greatest strictness. But I leave the readers
of these things to their own just reflections, which they will be
more able to make effectual than I, who so soon forgot myself,
and am therefore but a very indifferent monitor.

I was now a single person again, as I may call myself; I was
loosed from all the obligations either of wedlock or mistress-ship
in the world, except my husband the linen-draper, whom, I having
not now heard from in almost fifteen years, nobody could
blame me for thinking myself entirely freed from; seeing also he
had at his going away told me, that if I did not hear frequently
from him, I should conclude he was dead, and I might freely
marry again to whom I pleased.

I now began to cast up my accounts. I had by many letters
and much importunity, and with the intercession of my mother
too, had a second return of some goods from my brother (as I
now call him) in Virginia, to make up the damage of the cargo
I brought away with me, and this too was upon the condition
of my sealing a general release to him, and to send it him by
his correspondent at Bristol, which, though I thought hard of,
yet I was obliged to promise to do. However, I managed so
well in this case, that I got my goods away before the release
was signed, and then I always found something or other to say
to evade the thing, and to put off the signing it at all; till at
length I pretended I must write to my brother, and have his
answer, before I could do it.

Including this recruit, and before I got the last #50, I found
my strength to amount, put all together, to about #400, so
that with that I had about #450. I had saved above #100 more,
but I met with a disaster with that, which was this--that a
goldsmith in whose hands I had trusted it, broke, so I lost #70
of my money, the man's composition not making above #30
out of his #100. I had a little plate, but not much, and was
well enough stocked with clothes and linen.

With this stock I had the world to begin again; but you are to
consider that I was not now the same woman as when I lived
at Redriff; for, first of all, I was near twenty years older, and
did not look the better for my age, nor for my rambles to
Virginia and back again; and though I omitted nothing that
might set me out to advantage, except painting, for that I never
stooped to, and had pride enough to think I did not want it, yet
there would always be some difference seen between five-and-twenty
and two-and-forty.

I cast about innumerable ways for my future state of life, and
began to consider very seriously what I should do, but nothing
offered. I took care to make the world take me for something
more than I was, and had it given out that I was a fortune, and
that my estate was in my own hands; the last of which was
very true, the first of it was as above. I had no acquaintance,
which was one of my worst misfortunes, and the consequence
of that was, I had no adviser, at least who could assist and
advise together; and above all, I had nobody to whom I could
in  confidence commit the secret of my circumstances to, and
could depend upon for their secrecy and fidelity; and I found
by experience, that to be friendless in the worst condition,
next to being in want that a woman can be reduced to: I say
a woman, because 'tis evident men can be their own advisers,
and their own directors, and know how to work themselves
out of difficulties and into business better than women; but if
a woman has no friend to communicate her affairs to, and to
advise and assist her, 'tis ten to one but she is undone; nay,
and the more money she has, the more danger she is in of being
wronged and deceived; and this was my case in the affair of
the #100 which I left in the hands of the goldsmith, as above,
whose credit, it seems, was upon the ebb before, but I, that
had no knowledge of things and nobody to consult with, knew
nothing of it, and so lost my money.

In the next place, when a woman is thus left desolate and void
of counsel, she is just like a bag of money or a jewel dropped
on the highway, which is a prey to the next comer; if a man of
virtue and upright principles happens to find it, he will have it
cried, and the owner may come to hear of it again; but how
many times shall such a thing fall into hands that will make no
scruple of seizing it for their own, to once that it shall come
into good hands?

This was evidently my case, for I was now a loose, unguided
creature, and had no help, no assistance, no guide for my
conduct; I knew what I aimed at and what I wanted, but knew
nothing how to pursue the end by direct means. I wanted to
be placed in a settle state of living, and had I happened to meet
with a sober, good husband, I should have been as faithful and
true a wife to him as virtue itself could have formed. If I had
been otherwise, the vice came in always at the door of necessity,
not at the door of inclination; and I understood too well, by
the want of it, what the value of a settled life was, to do
anything to forfeit the felicity of it; nay, I should have made
the better wife for all the difficulties I had passed through, by
a great deal; nor did I in any of the time that I had been a wife
give my husbands the least uneasiness on account of my
behaviour.

But all this was nothing; I found no encouraging prospect. I
waited; I lived regularly, and with as much frugality as became
my circumstances, but nothing offered, nothing presented, and
the main stock wasted apace. What to do I knew not; the
terror of approaching poverty lay hard upon my spirits. I had
some money, but where to place it I knew not, nor would the
interest of it maintain me, at least not in London.

At length a new scene opened. There was in the house where
I lodged a north-country woman that went for a gentlewoman,
and nothing was more frequent in her discourse than her account
of the cheapness of provisions, and the easy way of living in
her country; how plentiful and how cheap everything was, what
good company they kept, and the like; till at last I told her she
almost tempted me to go and live in her country; for I that
was a widow, though I had sufficient to live on, yet had no
way of increasing it; and that I found I could not live here
under #100 a year, unless I kept no company, no servant, made
no appearance, and buried myself in privacy, as if I was obliged
to it by necessity.

I should have observed, that she was always made to believe,
as everybody else was, that I was a great fortune, or at least
that I had three or four thousand pounds, if not more, and all
in my own hands; and she was mighty sweet upon me when
she thought me inclined in the least to go into her country.
She said she had a sister lived near Liverpool, that her brother
was a considerable gentleman there, and had a great estate
also in Ireland; that she would go down there in about two
months, and if I would give her my company thither, I should
be as welcome as herself for a month or more as I pleased,
till I should see how I liked the country; and if I thought fit to
live there, she would undertake they would take care, though
they did not entertain lodgers themselves, they would recommend
me to some agreeable family, where I should be placed to my
content.

If this woman had known my real circumstances, she would
never have laid so many snares, and taken so many weary steps
to catch a poor desolate creature that was good for little when
it was caught; and indeed I, whose case was almost desperate,
and thought I could not be much worse, was not very anxious
about what might befall me, provided they did me no personal
injury; so I suffered myself, though not without a great deal
of invitation and great professions of sincere friendship and
real kindness--I say, I suffered myself to be prevailed upon to
go with her, and accordingly I packed up my baggage, and put
myself in a posture for a journey, though I did not absolutely
know whither I was to go.

And now I found myself in great distress; what little I had
in the world was all in money, except as before, a little plate,
some linen, and my clothes; as for my household stuff, I had
little or none, for I had lived always in lodgings; but I had not
one friend in the world with whom to trust that little I had, or
to direct me how to dispose of it, and this perplexed me night
and day. I thought of the bank, and of the other companies in
London, but I had no friend to commit the management of it
to, and keep and carry about with me bank bills, tallies, orders,
and such things, I looked upon at as unsafe; that if they were
lost, my money was lost, and then I was undone; and, on the
other hand, I might be robbed and perhaps murdered in a strange
place for them. This perplexed me strangely, and what to do I
knew not.

It came in my thoughts one morning that I would go to the
bank myself, where I had often been to receive the interest of
some bills I had, which had interest payable on them, and where
I had found a clerk, to whom I applied myself, very honest and
just to me, and particularly so fair one time that when I had
mistold my money, and taken less than my due, and was coming
away, he set me to rights and gave me the rest, which he might
have put into his own pocket.

I went to him and represented my case very plainly, and asked
if he would trouble himself to be my adviser, who was a poor
friendless widow, and knew not what to do. He told me, if
I desired his opinion of anything within the reach of his business,
he would do his endeavour that I should not be wronged, but
that he would also help me to a good sober person who was
a grave man of his acquaintance, who was a clerk in such
business too, though not in their house, whose judgment was
good, and whose honesty I might depend upon. 'For,' added
he, 'I will answer for him, and for every step he takes; if he
wrongs you, madam, of one farthing, it shall lie at my door, I
will make it good; and he delights to assist people in such
cases--he does it as an act of charity.'

I was a little at a stand in this discourse; but after some pause
I told him I had rather have depended upon him, because I had
found him honest, but if that could not be, I would take his
recommendation sooner than any one's else. 'I dare say,
madam,' says he, 'that you will be as well satisfied with my
friend as with me, and he is thoroughly able to assist you,
which I am not.'  It seems he had his hands full of the business
of the bank, and had engaged to meddle with no other business
that that of his office, which I heard afterwards, but did not
understand then. He added, that his friend should take nothing
of me for his advice or assistance, and this indeed encouraged
me very much.

He appointed the same evening, after the bank was shut and
business over, for me to meet him and his friend. And indeed
as soon as I saw his friend, and he began but to talk of the
affair, I was fully satisfied that I had a very honest man to deal
with; his countenance spoke it, and his character, as I heard
afterwards, was everywhere so good, that I had no room for
any more  doubts upon me.

After the first meeting, in which I only said what I had said
before, we parted, and he appointed me to come the next day
to him, telling me I might in the meantime satisfy myself of
him by inquiry, which, however, I knew not how well to do,
having no acquaintance myself.

Accordingly I met him the next day, when I entered more
freely with him into my case. I told him my circumstances at
large: that I was a widow come over from American, perfectly
desolate and friendless; that I had a little money, and but a
little, and was almost distracted for fear of losing it, having no
friend in the world to trust with the management of it; that I
was going into the north of England to live cheap, that my
stock might not waste; that I would willingly lodge my money
in the bank, but that I durst not carry the bills about me, and
the like, as above; and how to correspond about it, or with
whom, I knew not.

He told me I might lodge the money in the bank as an account,
and its being entered into the books would entitle me to the
money at any time, and if I was in the north I might draw bills
on the cashier and receive it when I would; but that then it
would be esteemed as running cash, and the bank would give
no interest for it; that I might buy stock with it, and so it would
lie in store for me, but that then if I wanted to dispose if it, I
must come up to town on purpose to transfer it, and even it
would be with some difficulty I should receive the half-yearly
dividend, unless I was here in person, or had some friend I
could trust with having the stock in him name to do it for me,
and that would have the same difficulty in it as before; and
with that he looked hard at me and smiled a little. At last, says
he, 'Why do you not get a head steward, madam, that may take
you and your money together into keeping, and then you would
have the trouble taken off your hands?'  'Ay, sir, and the money
too, it may be,' said I; 'for truly I find the hazard that way is as
much as 'tis t'other way'; but I remember I said secretly to myself,
'I wish you would ask me the question fairly, I would consider
very seriously on it before I said No.'

He went on a good way with me, and I thought once or twice
he was in earnest, but to my real affliction, I found at last he
had a wife; but when he owned he had a wife he shook his head,
and said with some concern, that indeed he had a wife, and no
wife. I began to think he had been in the condition of my late
lover, and that his wife had been distempered or lunatic, or
some such thing. However, we had not much more discourse
at that time, but he told me he was in too much hurry of
business then, but that if I would come home to his house after
their business was over, he would by that time consider what
might be done for me, to put my affairs in a posture of security.
I told him I would come, and desired to know where he lived.
He gave me a direction in writing, and when he gave it me he
read it to me, and said, 'There 'tis, madam, if you dare trust
yourself with me.'  'Yes, sir,' said I, 'I believe I may venture
to trust you with myself, for you have a wife, you say, and I
don't want a husband; besides, I dare trust you with my money,
which is all I have in the world, and if that were gone, I may
trust myself anywhere.'

He said some things in jest that were very handsome and
mannerly, and would have pleased me very well if they had
been in earnest; but that passed over, I took the directions,
and appointed to attend him at his house at seven o'clock the
same evening.

When I came he made several proposals for my placing my
money in the bank, in order to my having interest for it; but
still some difficult or other came in the way, which he objected
as not safe; and I found such a sincere disinterested honesty
in him, that I began to muse with myself, that I had certainly
found the honest man I wanted, and that I could never put
myself into better hands; so I told him with a great deal of
frankness that I had never met with a man or woman yet that
I could trust, or in whom I could think myself safe, but that I
saw he was so disinterestedly concerned for my safety, that I
said I would freely trust him with the management of that little
I had, if he would accept to be steward for a poor widow that
could give him no salary.

He smiled and, standing up, with great respect saluted me.
He told me he could not but take it very kindly that I had so
good an opinion of him; that he would not deceive me, that
he would do anything in his power to serve me, and expect
no salary; but that he could not by any means accept of a trust,
that it might bring him to be suspected of self-interest, and that
if I should die he might have disputes with my executors, which
he should be very loth to encumber himself with.

I told him if those were all his objections I would soon remove
them, and convince him that there was not the least room for
any difficulty; for that, first, as for suspecting him, if ever I
should do it, now is the time to suspect him, and not put the
trust into his hands, and whenever I did suspect him, he could
but throw it up then and refuse to go any further. Then, as to
executors, I assured him I had no heirs, nor any relations in
England, and I should alter my condition before I died, and
then his trust and trouble should cease together, which,
however, I had no prospect of yet; but I told him if I died as
I was, it should be all his own, and he would deserve it by
being so faithful to me as I was satisfied he would be.

He changed his countenance at this discourse, and asked me
how I came to have so much good-will for him; and, looking
very much pleased, said he might very lawfully wish he was
a single man for my sake. I smiled, and told him as he was
not, my offer could have no design upon him in it, and to wish,
ashe did, was not to be allowed, 'twas criminal to his wife.

He told me I was wrong. 'For,' says he, 'madam, as I said
before, I have a wife and no wife, and 'twould be no sin to me
to wish her hanged, if that were all.'  'I know nothing of your
circumstances that way, sir,' said I; 'but it cannot be innocent
to wish your wife dead.'  'I tell you,' says he again, 'she is a
wife and no wife; you don't know what I am, or what she is.'

'That's true,' said I; 'sir, I do not know what you are, but I
believe you to be an honest man, and that's the cause of all
my confidence in you.'

'Well, well,' says he, 'and so I am, I hope, too. but I am
something else too, madam; for,' says he, 'to be plain with you,
I am a cuckold, and she is a whore.'  He spoke it in a kind of
jest, but it was with such an awkward smile, that I perceived
it was what struck very close to him, and he looked dismally
when he said it.

'That alters the case indeed, sir,' said I, 'as to that part you
were speaking of; but a cuckold, you know, may be an honest
man; it does not alter that case at all. Besides, I think,' said
I, 'since your wife is so dishonest to you, you are too honest
to her to own her for your wife; but that,' said I, 'is what I
have nothing to do with.'

'Nay,' says he, 'I do not think to clear my hands of her; for,
to be plain with you, madam,' added he, 'I am no contended
cuckold neither: on the other hand, I assure you it provokes
me the highest degree, but I can't help myself; she that will
be a whore, will be a whore.'

I waived the discourse and began to talk of my business; but
I found he could not have done with it, so I let him alone, and
he went on to tell me all the circumstances of his case, too
long to relate here; particularly, that having been out of England
some time before he came to the post he was in, she had had
two children in the meantime by an officer of the army; and
that when he came to England and, upon her submission, took
her again, and maintained her very well, yet she ran away from
him with a linen-draper's apprentice, robbed him of what she
could come at, and continued to live from him still. 'So that,
madam,' says he, 'she is a whore not by necessity, which is
the common bait of your sex, but by inclination, and for the
sake of the vice.'

Well, I pitied him, and wished him well rid of her, and still
would have talked of my business, but it would not do. At
last he looks steadily at me. 'Look you, madam,' says he,
'you came to ask advice of me, and I will serve you as faithfully
as if you were my own sister; but I must turn the tables, since
you oblige me to do it, and are so friendly to me, and I think
I must ask advice of you. Tell me, what must a poor abused
fellow do with a whore? What can I do to do myself justice
upon her?'

'Alas! sir,' says I, ''tis a case too nice for me to advise in, but
it seems she has run away from you, so you are rid of her
fairly; what can you desire more?'  'Ay, she is gone indeed,'
said he, 'but I am not clear of her for all that.'

'That's true,' says I; 'she may indeed run you into debt, but
the law has furnished you with methods to prevent that also;
you may cry her down, as they call it.'

'No, no,' says he, 'that is not the case neither; I have taken
care of all that; 'tis not that part that I speak of, but I would
be rid of her so that I might marry again.'

'Well, sir,' says I, 'then you must divorce her. If you can
prove what you say, you may certainly get that done, and then,
I suppose, you are free.'

'That's very tedious and expensive,' says he.

'Why,' says I, 'if you can get any woman you like to take your
word, I suppose your wife would not dispute the liberty with
you that she takes herself.'

'Ay,' says he, 'but 'twould be hard to bring an honest woman
to do that; and for the other sort,' says he, 'I have had enough
of her to meddle with any more whores.'

It occurred to me presently, 'I would have taken your word
with all my heart, if you had but asked me the question';
but that was to myself. To him I replied, 'Why, you shut the
door against any honest woman accepting you, for you condemn
all that should venture upon you at once, and conclude, that
really a woman that takes you now can't be honest.'

'Why,' says he, 'I wish you would satisfy me that an honest
woman would take me; I'd venture it'; and then turns short
upon me, 'Will you take me, madam?'

'That's not a fair question,' says I, 'after what you have said;
however, lest you should think I wait only for a recantation
of it, I shall answer you plainly, No, not I; my business is of
another kind with you, and I did not expect you would have
turned my serious application to you, in my own distracted
case, into a comedy.'

'Why, madam,' says he, 'my case is as distracted as yours can
be, and I stand in as much need of advice as you do, for I think
if I have not relief somewhere, I shall be made myself, and I
know not what course to take, I protest to you.'

'Why, sir,' says I, ''tis easy to give advice in your case, much
easier than it is in mine.'  'Speak then,' says he, 'I beg of you,
for now you encourage me.'

'Why,' says I, 'if your case is so plain as you say it is, you may
be legally divorced, and then you may find honest women
enough to ask the question of fairly; the sex is not so scarce
that you can want a wife.'

'Well, then,' said he, 'I am in earnest; I'll take your advice;
but shall I ask you one question seriously beforehand?'

'Any question,' said I, 'but that you did before.'

'No, that answer will not do,' said he, 'for, in short, that is the
question I shall ask.'

'You may ask what questions you please, but you have my
answer to that already,' said I. 'Besides, sir,' said I, 'can you
think so ill of me as that I would give any answer to such a
question beforehand? Can any woman alive believe you in
earnest, or think you design anything but to banter her?'

'Well, well,' says he, 'I do not banter you, I am in earnest;
consider of it.'

'But, sir,' says I, a little gravely, 'I came to you about my own
business; I beg of you to let me know, what you will advise me
to do?'

'I will be prepared,' says he, 'against you come again.'

'Nay,' says I, 'you have forbid my coming any more.'

'Why so?' said he, and looked a little surprised.

'Because,' said I, 'you can't expect I should visit you on the
account you talk of.'

'Well,' says he, 'you shall promise me to come again, however,
and I will not say any more of it till I have gotten the divorce,
but I desire you will prepare to be better conditioned when
that's done, for you shall be the woman, or I will not be
divorced at all; why, I owe it to your unlooked-for kindness,
if it were to nothing else, but I have other reasons too.'

He could not have said anything in the world that pleased me
better; however, I knew that the way to secure him was to
stand off while the thing was so remote, as it appeared to be,
and that it was time enough to accept of it when he was able
to perform it; so I said very respectfully to him, it was time
enough to consider of these things when he was in a condition
to talk of them; in the meantime, I told him, I was going a
great way from him, and he would find objects enough to
please him better. We broke off here for the present, and he
made me promise him to come again the next day, for his
resolutions upon my own business, which after some pressing
I did; though had he seen farther into me, I wanted no pressing
on that account.

I came the next evening, accordingly, and brought my maid
with me, to let him see that I kept a maid, but I sent her away
as soon as I was gone in. He would have had me let the maid
have stayed, but I would not, but ordered her aloud to come
for me again about nine o'clock. But he forbade that, and told
me he would see me safe home, which, by the way, I was not
very well please with, supposing he might do that to know
where I lived and inquire into my character and circumstances.
However, I ventured that, for all that the people there or
thereabout knew of me, was to my advantage; and all the
character he had of me, after he had inquired, was that I was
a woman of fortune, and that I was a very modest, sober body;
which, whether true or not in the main, yet you may see how
necessary it is for all women who expect anything in the world,
to preserve the character of their virtue, even when perhaps
they may have sacrificed the thing itself.

I found, and was not a little please with it, that he had provided
a supper for me. I found also he lived very handsomely, and
had a house very handsomely furnished; all of which I was  
rejoiced at indeed, for I looked upon it as all my own.

We had now a second conference upon the subject-matter of
the last conference. He laid his business very home indeed; he
protested his affection to me, and indeed I had no room to
doubt it; he declared that it began from the first moment I
talked with him, and long before I had mentioned leaving my
effects with him. ''Tis no matter when it began,' thought I;
'if it will but hold, 'twill be well enough.'  He then told me
how much the offer I had made of trusting him with my effects,
and leaving them to him, had enraged him. 'So I intended it
should,' thought I, 'but then I thought you had been a single
man too.'  After we had supped, I observed he pressed me
very hard to drink two or three glasses of wine, which, however,
I declined, but drank one glass or two. He then told me he
had a proposal to make to me, which I should promise him I
would not take ill if I should not grant it. I told him I hoped
he would make no dishonourable proposal to me, especially
in his own house, and that if it was such, I desired he would
not propose it, that I might not be obliged to offer any
resentment to him that did not become the respect I professed
for him, and the trust I had placed in him in coming to his house;
and begged of him he would give me leave to go away, and
accordingly began to put on my gloves and prepare to be gone,
though at the same time I no more intended it than he intended
to let me.

Well, he importuned me not to talk of going; he assured me
he had no dishonourable thing in his thoughts about me, and
was very far from offering anything to me that was dishonourable,
and if I thought so, he would choose to say no more of it.

That part I did not relish at all. I told him I was ready to hear
anything that he had to say, depending that he would say nothing
unworthy of himself, or unfit for me to hear. Upon this, he
told me his proposal was this: that I would marry him, though
he had not yet obtained the divorce from the whore his wife;
and to satisfy me that he meant honourably, he would promise
not to desire me to live with him, or go to bed with him till the
divorce was obtained. My heart said yet to this offer at first
word, but it was necessary to play the hypocrite a little more
with him; so I seemed to decline the motion with some warmth,
and besides a little condemning the thing as unfair, told him
that such a proposal could be of no signification, but to entangle
us both in great difficulties; for if he should not at last obtain
the divorce, yet we could not dissolve the marriage, neither
could we proceed in it; so that if he was disappointed in the
divorce, I left him to consider what a condition we should
both be in.

In short, I carried on the argument against this so far, that I
convinced him it was not a proposal that had any sense in it.
Well, then he went from it to another, and that was, that I
would sign and seal a contract with him, conditioning to marry
him as soon as the divorce was obtained, and to be void if he
could not obtain it.

I told him such a thing was more rational than the other; but
as this was the first time that ever I could imagine him weak
enough to be in earnest in this affair, I did not use to say Yes
at first asking; I would consider of it.

I played with this lover as an angler does with a trout. I found
I had him fast on the hook, so I jested with his new proposal,
and put him off. I told him he knew little of me, and bade him
inquire about me; I let him also go home with me to my lodging,
though I would not ask him to go in, for I told him it was not
decent.

In short, I ventured to avoid signing a contract of marriage,
and the reason why I did it was because the lady that had
invited me so earnestly to go with her into Lancashire insisted
so positively upon it, and promised me such great fortunes,
and such fine things there, that I was tempted to go and try.
'Perhaps,' said I, 'I may mend myself very much'; and then I
made no scruple in my thoughts of quitting my honest citizen,
whom I was not so much in love with as not to leave him for
a richer.

In a word, I avoided a contract; but told him I would go into
the north, that he should know where to write to me by the
consequence of the business I had entrusted with him; that I
would give him a sufficient pledge of my respect for him, for
I would leave almost all I had in the world in his hands; and
I would thus far give him my word, that as soon as he had
sued out a divorce from his first wife, he would send me an
account of it, I would come up to London, and that then we
would talk seriously of the matter.

It was a base design I went with, that I must confess, though
I was invited thither with a design much worse than mine was,
as the sequel will discover. Well, I went with my friend, as I
called her, into Lancashire. All the way we went she caressed
me with the utmost appearance of a sincere, undissembled
affection; treated me, except my coach-hire, all the way; and
her brother brought a gentleman's coach to Warrington to
receive us, and we were carried from thence to Liverpool with
as much ceremony as I could desire. We were also entertained
at a merchant's house in Liverpool three or four days very
handsomely; I forbear to tell his name, because of what followed.
Then she told me she would carry me to an uncle's house of
hers, where we should be nobly entertained. She did so; her
uncle, as she called him, sent a coach and four horses for us,
and we were carried near forty miles I know not whither.

We came, however, to a gentleman's seat, where was a
numerous family, a large park, extraordinary company indeed,
and where she was called cousin. I told her if she had resolved
to bring me into such company as this, she should have let me
have prepared myself, and have furnished myself with better
clothes. The ladies took notice of that, and told me very
genteelly they did not value people in their country so much
by their clothes as they did in London; that their cousin had
fully informed them of my quality, and that I did not want
clothes to set me off; in short, they entertained me, not like
what I was, but like what they thought I had been, namely, a
widow lady of a great fortune.

The first discovery I made here was, that the family were all
Roman Catholics, and the cousin too, whom I called my friend;
however, I must say that nobody in the world could behave
better to me, and I had all the civility shown me that I could
have had if I had been of their opinion. The truth is, I had not
so much principle of any kind as to be nice in point of religion,
and I presently learned to speak favourably of the Romish
Church; particularly, I told them I saw little but the prejudice
of education in all the difference that were among Christians
about religion, and if it had so happened that my father had
been a Roman Catholic, I doubted not but I should have been
as well pleased with their religion as my own.

This obliged them in the highest degree, and as I was besieged
day and night with good company and pleasant discourse, so
I had two or three old ladies that lay at me upon the subject
of religion too. I was so complaisant, that though I would not
completely engage, yet I made no scruple to be present at their
mass, and to conform to all their gestures as they showed me
the pattern, but I would not come too cheap; so that I only in
the main encouraged them to expect that I would turn Roman
Catholic, if I was instructed in the Catholic doctrine as they
called it, and so the matter rested.

I stayed here about six weeks; and then my conductor led me
back to a country village, about six miles from Liverpool,
where her brother (as she called him) came to visit me in his
own chariot, and in a very good figure, with two footmen in
a good livery; and the next thing was to make love to me. As
it had happened to me, one would think I could not have been
cheated, and indeed I thought so myself, having a safe card at
home, which I resolved not to quit unless I could mend myself
very much. However, in all appearance this brother was a
match worth my listening to, and the least his estate was valued
at was #1000 a year, but the sister said it was worth #1500 a
year, and  lay most of it in Ireland.

I that was a great fortune, and passed for such, was above
being asked how much my estate was; and my false friend
taking it upon a foolish hearsay, had raised it from #500 to
#5000, and by the time she came into the country she called
it  #15,000. The Irishman, for such I understood him to be,
was stark mad at this bait; in short, he courted me, made me
presents, and ran in debt like a madman for the expenses of
his equipage and of  his courtship. He had, to give him his due,
the appearance of an extraordinary fine gentleman; he was tall,
well-shaped, and had an extraordinary address; talked as
naturally of his park and his stables, of his horses, his gamekeepers,
his woods, his tenants, and his servants, as if we had been in
the mansion-house, and I had seen them all about me.

He never so much as asked me about my fortune or estate, but
assured me that when we came to Dublin he would jointure
me in #600 a year good land; and that we could enter into a  
deed of settlement or contract here for the performance of it.

This was such language indeed as I had not been used to, and
I was here beaten out of all my measures; I had a she-devil in
my bosom, every hour telling me how great her brother lived.
One time she would come for my orders, how I would have
my coaches painted, and how lined; and another time what
clothes my page should wear; in short, my eyes were dazzled.
I had now lost my power of saying No, and, to cut the story
short, I consented to be married; but to be the more private,
we were carried farther into the country, and married by a
Romish clergyman, who I was assured would marry us as
effectually as a Church of England parson.

I cannot say but I had some reflections in this affair upon the
dishonourable forsaking my faithful citizen, who loved me
sincerely, and who was endeavouring to quit himself of a  
scandalous whore by whom he had been indeed barbarously
used, and promised himself infinite happiness in his new choice;
which choice was now giving up herself to another in a manner
almost as scandalous as hers could be.

But the glittering shoe of a great estate, and of fine things,
which the deceived creature that was now my deceiver
represented every hour to my imagination, hurried me away,
and gave me no time to think of London, or of anything there,
much less of the obligation I had to a person of infinitely more
real merit than what was now before me.

But the thing was done; I was now in the arms of my new
spouse, who appeared still the same as before; great even to
magnificence, and nothing less than #1000 a year could support
the ordinary equipage he appeared in.

After we had been married about a month, he began to talk
of my going to West Chester in order to embark for Ireland.
However, he did not hurry me, for we stayed near three weeks
longer, and then he sent to Chester for a coach to meet us at
the Black Rock, as they call it, over against Liverpool. Thither
we went in a fine boat they call a pinnace, with six oars; his
servants, and horses, and baggage going in the ferry-boat.
He made his excuse to me that he had no acquaintance in
Chester, but he would go before and get some handsome
apartment for me at a private house. I asked him how long
we should stay at Chester. He said, not at all, any longer than
one night or two, but he would immediately hire a coach to
go to Holyhead. Then I told him he should by no means give
himself the trouble to get private lodgings for one night or
two, for that Chester being a great place, I made no doubt but
there would be very good inns and accommodation enough;
so we lodged at an inn in the West Street, not far from the
Cathedral; I forget what sign it was at.

Here my spouse, talking of my going to Ireland, asked me if
I had no affairs to settle at London before we went off. I
told him No, not of any great consequence, but what might be
done as well by letter from Dublin. 'Madam,' says he, very
respectfully, 'I suppose the greatest part of your estate, which
my sister tells me is most of it in money in the Bank of England,
lies secure enough, but in case it required transferring, or any
way altering its property, it might be necessary to go up to
London and settle those things before we went over.'

I seemed to look strange at it, and told him I knew not what
he meant; that I had no effects in the Bank of England that I
knew of; and I hoped he could not say that I had ever told him
I had. No, he said, I had not told him so, but his sister had
said the greatest part of my estate lay there. 'And I only
mentioned it, me dear,' said he, 'that if there was any occasion
to settle it, or order anything about it, we might not be obliged
to the hazard and trouble of another voyage back again'; for
he added, that he did not care to venture me too much upon
the sea.

I was surprised at this talk, and began to consider very seriously
what the meaning of it must be; and it presently occurred to me
that my friend, who called him brother, had represented me in
colours which were not my due; and I thought, since it was come
to that pitch, that I would know the bottom of it before I went
out of England, and before I should put myself into I knew not
whose hands in a strange country.

Upon this I called his sister into my chamber the next morning,
and letting her know the discourse her brother and I had
been upon the evening before, I conjured her to tell me what
she had said to him, and upon what foot it was that she had
made this marriage. She owned that she had told him that I
was a great fortune, and said that she was told so at London.
'Told so!' says I warmly; 'did I ever tell you so?'  No, she
said, it was true I did not tell her so, but I had said several
times that what I had was in my own disposal. 'I did so,'
returned I very quickly and hastily, 'but I never told you I had
anything called a fortune; no, not that I had #100, or the value
of #100, in the world. Any how did it consist with my being
a fortune,; said I, 'that I should come here into the north of
England with you, only upon the account of living cheap?'  
At these words, which I spoke warm and high, my husband,
her brother (as she called him), came into the room, and I
desired him to come and sit down, for I had something of
moment to say before them both, which it was absolutely
necessary he should hear.

He looked a little disturbed at the assurance with which I
seemed to speak it, and came and sat down by me, having first
shut the door; upon which I began, for I was very much provoked,
and turning myself to him, 'I am afraid,' says I, 'my dear' (for
I spoke with kindness on his side), 'that you have a very great
abuse put upon you, and an injury done you never to be
repaired in your marrying me, which, however, as I have had
no hand in it, I desire I may be fairly acquitted of it, and that
the blame may lie where it ought to lie, and nowhere else, for
I wash my hands of every part of it.'

'What injury can be done me, my dear,' says he, 'in marrying
you. I hope it is to my honour and advantage every way.'  'I
will soon explain it to you,' says I, 'and I fear you will have
no reason to think yourself well used; but I will convince you,
my dear,' says I again, 'that I have had no hand in it'; and there
I stopped a while.

He looked now scared and wild, and began, I believe, to
suspect what followed; however, looking towards me, and
saying only, 'Go on,' he sat silent, as if to hear what I had
more to say; so I went on. 'I asked you last night,' said I,
speaking to him, 'if ever I made any boast to you of my estate,
or ever told you I had any estate in the Bank of England or
anywhere else, and you owned I had not, as is most true; and
I desire you will tell me here, before your sister, if ever I gave
you any reason from me to think so, or that ever we had any
discourse about it'; and he owned again I had not, but said I
had appeared always as a woman of fortune, and he depended
on it that I was so, and hoped he was not deceived. 'I am not
inquiring yet whether you have been deceived or not,' said I;
'I fear you have, and I too; but I am clearing myself from the
unjust charge of being concerned in deceiving you.

'I have been now asking your sister if ever I told her of any
fortune or estate I had, or gave her any particulars of it; and
she owns I never did. Any pray, madam,' said I, turning myself
to her, 'be so just to me, before your brother, to charge me,
if you can, if ever I pretended to you that I had an estate; and
why, if I had, should I come down into this country with you
on purpose to spare that little I had, and live cheap?'  She
could not deny one word, but said she had been told in London
that I had a very great fortune, and that it lay in the Bank of
England.

'And now, dear sir,' said I, turning myself to my new spouse
again, 'be so just to me as to tell me who has abused both you
and me so much as to make you believe I was a fortune, and
prompt you to court me to this marriage?'  He could not speak
a word, but pointed to her; and, after some more pause, flew
out in the most furious passion that ever I saw a man in my
life, cursing her, and calling her all the whores and hard names
he could think of; and that she had ruined him, declaring that
she had told him I had #15,000, and that she was to have #500
of him for procuring this match for him. He then added,
directing his speech to me, that she was none of his sister, but
had been his whore for two years before, that she had had #100
of him in part of this bargain, and that he was utterly undone
if things were as I said; and in his raving he swore he would
let her heart's blood out immediately, which frightened her
and me too. She cried, said she had been told so in the house
where I lodged. But this aggravated him more than before,
that she should put so far upon him, and run things such a
length upon no other authority than a hearsay; and then, turning
to me again, said very honestly, he was afraid we were both
undone. 'For, to be plain, my dear, I have no estate,' says he;
'what little I had, this devil has made me run out in waiting
on you and putting me into this equipage.'  She took the
opportunity of his being earnest in talking with me, and got
out of the room, and I never saw her more.

I was confounded now as much as he,  and knew not what to
say. I thought many ways that I had the worst of it, but his
saying he was undone, and that he had no estate neither, put
me into a mere distraction. 'Why,' says I to him, 'this has
been a hellish juggle, for we are married here upon the foot
of a double fraud; you are undone by the disappointment, it
seems; and if I had had a fortune I had been cheated too, for
you say you have nothing.'

'You would indeed have been cheated, my dear,' says he, 'but
you would not have been undone, for #15,000 would have
maintained us both very handsomely in this country; and I
assure you,' added he, 'I had resolved to have dedicated every
groat of it to you; I would not have wronged you of a shilling,
and the rest I would have made up in my affection to you, and
tenderness of you, as long as I lived.'

This was very honest indeed, and I really believe he spoke
as he intended, and that he was a man that was as well qualified
to make me happy, as to his temper and behaviour, as any
man ever was; but his having no estate, and being run into debt
on this ridiculous account in the country, made all the prospect
dismal and dreadful, and I knew not what to say, or what to
think of myself.

I told him it was very unhappy that so much love, and so much
good nature as I discovered in him, should be thus precipitated
into misery; that I saw nothing before us but ruin; for as to me,
it was my unhappiness that what little I had was not able to
relieve us week, and with that I pulled out a bank bill of #20
and eleven guineas, which I told him I had saved out of  my
little income, and that by the account that creature had given
me of the way of living in that country, I expected it would
maintain me three or four years; that if it was taken from me,
I was left destitute, and he knew what the condition of a woman
among strangers must be, if she had no money in her pocket;
however, I told him, if he would take it, there it was.

He told me with a great concern, and I thought I saw tears
stand in his eyes, that he would not touch it; that he abhorred
the thoughts of stripping me and make me miserable; that, on
the contrary, he had fifty guineas left, which was all he had in
the world, and he pulled it out and threw it down on the table,
bidding me take it, though he were to starve for want of it.

I returned, with the same concern for him, that I could not
bear to hear him talk so; that, on the contrary, if he could
propose any probable method of living, I would do anything
that became me on my part, and that I would live as close
and as narrow as he could desire.

He begged of me to talk no more at that rate, for it would
make him distracted; he said he was bred a gentleman, though
he was reduced to a low fortune, and that there was but one
way left which he could think of, and that would not do,
unless I could answer him one question, which, however, he
said he would not press me to. I told him I would answer it
honestly; whether it would be to his satisfaction or not, that
I could not tell.

'Why, then, my dear, tell me plainly,' says he, 'will the little
you have keep us together in any figure, or in any station or
place, or will it not?'

It was my happiness hitherto that I had not discovered myself
or my circumstances at all--no, not so much as my name; and
seeing these was nothing to be expected from him, however
good-humoured and however honest he seemed to be, but to
live on what I knew would soon be wasted, I resolved to
conceal everything but the bank bill and the eleven guineas
which I had owned; and I would have been very glad to have
lost that and have been set down where he took me up. I had
indeed another bank bill about me of #30, which was the whole
of what I brought with me, as well to subsist on in the country,
as not knowing what might offer; because this creature, the
go-between that had thus betrayed us both, had made me
believe strange things of my marrying to my advantage in the
country, and I was not willing to be without money, whatever
might happen. This bill I concealed, and that made me the
freer of the rest, in consideration of his circumstances, for I
really pitied him heartily.

But to return to his question, I told him I never willingly
deceived him, and I never would. I was very sorry to tell him
that the little I had would not subsist us; that it was not
sufficient to subsist me alone in the south country, and that
this was the reason that made me put myself into the hands
of that woman who called him brother, she having assured
me that I might board very handsomely at a town called
Manchester, where I had not yet been, for about #6 a year;
and my whole income not being about #15 a year, I thought I
might live easy upon it, and wait for better things.

He shook his head and remained silent, and a very melancholy
evening we had; however, we supped together, and lay together
that night, and when we had almost supped he looked a little
better and more cheerful, and called for a bottle of wine. 'Come,
my dear,' says he, ' though the case is bad, it is to no purpose
to be dejected. come, be as easy as you can; I will endeavour
to find out some way or other to live; if you can but subsist
yourself, that is better than nothing. I must try the world again;
a man ought to think like a man; to be discouraged is to yield
to the misfortune.'  With this he filled a glass and drank to me,
holding my hand and pressing it hard in his hand all the while
the wine went down, and protesting afterwards his main
concern was for me.

It was really a true, gallant spirit he was of, and it was the
more grievous to me. 'Tis something of relief even to be
undone by a man of honour, rather than by a scoundrel; but
here the greatest disappointment was on his side, for he had
really spent a great deal of money, deluded by this madam the
procuress; and it was very remarkable on what poor terms he
proceeded. First the baseness of the creature herself is to be
observed, who, for the getting #100 herself, could be content
to let him spend three or four more, though perhaps it was all
he had in the world, and more than all; when she had not the
least ground, more than a little tea-table chat, to say that I had
any estate, or was a fortune, or the like. It is true the design
of deluding a woman of fortune, I f I had been so, was base
enough; the putting the face of great things upon poor
circumstances was a fraud, and bad enough; but the case a
little differed too, and that in his favour, for he was not a rake
that made a trade to delude women, and, as some have done,
get six or seven fortunes after one another, and then rifle and
run away from them; but he was really a gentleman, unfortunate
and low, but had lived well; and though, if I had had a fortune,
I should have been enraged at the slut for betraying me, yet
really for the man, a fortune would not have been ill bestowed
on him, for he was a lovely person indeed, of generous principles,
good sense, and of abundance of good-humour.

We had a great deal of close conversation that night, for we
neither of us slept much; he was as penitent for having put all
those cheats upon me as if it had been felony, and that he was
going to execution; he offered me again every shilling of the
money he had about him, and said he would go into the army
and seek the world for more.

I asked him why he would be so unkind to carry me into
Ireland, when I might suppose he could not have subsisted me
there. He took me in his arms. 'My dear,' said he, 'depend
upon it, I never designed to go to Ireland at all, much less to
have carried you thither, but came hither to be out of the
observation of the people, who had heard what I pretended to,
and withal, that nobody might ask me for money before I was
furnished to supply them.'

'But where, then,' said I, 'were we to have gone next?'

'Why, my dear,' said he, 'I'll confess the whole scheme to you
as I had laid it; I purposed here to ask you something about
your estate, as you see I did, and when you, as I expected you
would, had entered into some account with me of the particulars,
I would have made an excuse to you to have put off our voyage
to Ireland for some time, and to have gone first towards London.

'Then, my dear,' said he, 'I resolved to have confessed all the
circumstances of my own affairs to you, and let you know I
had indeed made use of these artifices to obtain your consent
to marry me, but had now nothing to do but ask to your pardon,
and to tell you how abundantly, as I have said above, I would
endeavour to make you forget what was past, by the felicity
of the days to come.'

'Truly,' said I to him, 'I find you would soon have conquered
me; and it is my affliction now, that I am not in a condition to
let you see how easily I should have been reconciled to you,
and have passed by all the tricks you had put upon me, in
recompense of so much good-humour. But, my dear,' said I,
'what can we do now? We are both undone, and what better
are we for our being reconciled together, seeing we have
nothing to live on?'

We proposed a great many things, but nothing could offer
where there was nothing to begin with. He begged me at last
to talk no more of it, for, he said, I would break his heart; so
we talked of other things a little, till at last he took a husband's
leave of me, and so we went to sleep.

He rose before me in the morning; and indeed, having lain
awake almost all night, I was very sleepy, and lay till near
eleven o'clock. In this time he took his horses and three
servants, and all his linen and baggage, and away he went,
leaving a short but moving letter for me on the table, as
follows:--

'MY DEAR--I am a dog; I have abused you; but I have been
drawn into do it by a base creature, contrary to my principle
and the general practice of my life. Forgive me, my dear! I
ask your pardon with the greatest sincerity; I am the most
miserable of men, in having deluded you. I have been so happy
to posses you, and now am so wretched as to be forced to fly
from you. Forgive me, my dear; once more I say, forgive me!
I am not able to see you ruined by me, and myself unable to
support you. Our marriage is nothing; I shall never be able to
see you again; I here discharge you from it; if you can marry
to your advantage, do not decline it on my account; I here
swear to you on my faith, and on the word of a man of honour,
I will never disturb your repose if I should know of it, which,
however, is not likely. On the other hand, if you should not
marry, and if good fortune should befall me, it shall be all yours,
wherever you are.

'I have put some of the stock of money I have left into your
pocket; take places for yourself and your maid in the stage-coach,
and go for London; I hope it will bear your charges thither,
without breaking into your own. Again I sincerely ask your
pardon, and will do so as often as I shall ever think of you.
Adieu, my dear, for ever!--I am, your most affectionately, J.E.'

Nothing that ever befell me in my life sank so deep into my
heart as this farewell. I reproached him a thousand times in
my thoughts for leaving me, for I would have gone with him
through the world, if I had begged my bread. I felt in my
pocket, and there found ten guineas, his gold watch, and two
little rings, one a small diamond ring worth only about #6, and
the other a plain gold ring.

I sat me down and looked upon these things two hours
together, and scarce spoke a word, till my maid interrupted
me by telling me my dinner was ready. I ate but little, and
after dinner I fell into a vehement fit of crying, every now and
then calling him by his name, which was James. 'O Jemmy!'
said I, 'come back, come back. I'll give you all I have; I'll
beg, I'll starve with you.'  And thus I ran raving about the
room several times, and then sat down between whiles, and
then walking about again, called upon him to come back, and
then cried again; and thus I passed the afternoon, till about
seven o'clock, when it was near dusk, in the evening, being
August, when, to my unspeakable surprise, he comes back
into the inn, but without a servant, and comes directly up into
my chamber.

I was in the greatest confusion imaginable, and so was he too.
I could not imagine what should be the occasion of it, and
began to be at odds with myself whether to be glad or sorry;
but my affection biassed all the rest, and it was impossible to
conceal my joy, which was too great for smiles, for it burst
out into tears. He was no sooner entered the room but he ran
to me and took me in his arms, holding me fast, and almost
stopping my breath with his kisses, but spoke not a word.
At length I began. 'My dear,' said I, 'how could you go away
from me?' to which he gave no answer, for it was impossible
for him to speak.

When our ecstasies were a little over, he told me he was gone
about fifteen miles, but it was not in his power to go any farther
without coming back to see me again, and to take his leave of
me once more.

I told him how I had passed my time, and how loud I had
called him to come back again. He told me he heard me very
plain upon Delamere Forest, at a place about twelve miles off.
I smiled.  'Nay,' says he, 'do not think I am in jest, for if ever
I heard your voice in my life, I heard you call me aloud, and
sometimes I thought I saw you running after me.'  'Why,'
said I, 'what did I say?'--for I had not named the words to him.
'You called aloud,' says he, 'and said, O Jemmy! O Jemmy!
come back, come back.'

I laughed at him. 'My dear,' says he, 'do not laugh, for, depend
upon it, I heard your voice as plain as you hear mine now; if
you please, I'll go before a magistrate and make oath of it.'  I
then began to be amazed and surprised, and indeed frightened,
and told him what I had really done, and how I had called after
him, as above.

When we had amused ourselves a while about this, I said to
him: 'Well, you shall go away from me no more; I'll go all
over the world with you rather.'  He told me it would be very
difficult thing for him to leave me, but since it must be, he
hoped I would make it as easy to me as I could; but as for him,
it would be his destruction that he foresaw.

However, he told me that he considered he had left me to
travel to London alone, which was too long a journey; and
that as he might as well go that way as any way else, he was
resolved to see me safe thither, or near it; and if he did go
away then without taking his leave, I should not take it ill of
him; and this he made me promise.

He told me how he had dismissed his three servants, sold
their horses, and sent the fellows away to seek their fortunes,
and all in a little time, at a town on the road, I know not where.
'And,' says he, 'it cost me some tears all alone by myself, to
think how much happier they were than their master, for they
could go to the next gentleman's house to see for a service,
whereas,' said he, 'I knew not wither to go, or what to do
with myself.'

I told him I was so completely miserable in parting with him,
that I could not be worse; and that now he was come again,
I would not go from him, if he would take me with him, let
him go whither he would, or do what he would. And in the
meantime I agreed that we would go together to London; but
I could not be brought to consent he should go away at last
and not take his leave of me, as he proposed to do; but told
him, jesting, that if he did, I would call him back again as loud
as I did before. Then I pulled out his watch and gave it him
back, and his two rings, and his ten guineas; but he would not
take them, which made me very much suspect that he resolved
to go off upon the road and leave me.

The truth is, the circumstances he was in, the passionate
expressions of his letter, the kind, gentlemanly treatment I had
from him in all the affair, with the concern he showed for me
in it, his manner of parting with that large share which he gave
me of his little stock left--all these had joined to make such
impressions on me, that I really loved him most tenderly, and
could not bear the thoughts of parting with him.

Two days after this we quitted Chester, I in the stage-coach,
and he on horseback. I dismissed my maid at Chester. He
was very much against my being without a maid, but she being
a servant hired in the country, and I resolving to keep no
servant at London, I told him it would have been barbarous
to have taken the poor wench and have turned her away as
soon as I came to town; and it would also have been a needless
charge on the road, so I satisfied him, and he was easy enough
on the score.

He came with me as far as Dunstable, within thirty miles of
London, and then he told me fate and his own misfortunes
obliged him to leave me, and that it was not convenient for
him to go to London, for reasons which it was of no value to
me to know, and I saw him preparing to go. The stage-coach
we were in did not usually stop at Dunstable, but I desiring it
but for a quart of an hour, they were content to stand at an
inndoor a while, and we went into the house.

Being in the inn, I told him I had but one favour more to as
of him, and that was, that since he could not go any farther,
he would give me leave to stay a week or two in the town with
him, that we might in that time think of something to prevent
such a ruinous thing to us both, as a final separation would be;
and that I had something of moment to offer him, that I had
never said yet, and which perhaps he might find practicable to
our mutual advantage.

This was too reasonable a proposal to be denied, so he called
the landlady of the house, and told her his wife was taken ill,
and so ill that she could not think of going any farther in the
stage-coach, which had tired her almost to death, and asked
if she could not get us a lodging for two or three days in a
private house, where I might rest me a little, for the journey
had been too much for me. The landlady, a good sort of
woman, well-bred and very obliging, came immediately to
see me; told me she had two or three very good rooms in a
part of the house quite out of the noise, and if I saw them,
she did not doubt but I would like them, and I should have
one of her maids, that should do nothing else but be appointed
to wait on me. This was so very kind, that I could not but
accept of it, and thank her; so I went to look on the rooms and
liked them very well, and indeed they were extraordinarily
furnished, and very pleasant lodgings; so we paid the stage-coach,
took out our baggage, and resolved to stay here a while.

Here I told him I would live with him now till all my money
was spent, but would not let him spend a shilling of his own.
We had some kind squabble about that, but I told him it was
the last time I was like to enjoy his company, and I desired he
would let me be master in that thing only, and he should govern
in everything else; so he acquiesced.

Here one evening, taking a walk into the fields, I told him I
would now make the proposal to him I had told him of;
accordingly I related to him how I had lived in Virginia, that
I had a mother I believed was alive there still, though my
husband was dead some years. I told him that had not my
effects miscarried, which, by the way, I magnified pretty much,
I might have been fortune good enough to him to have kept
us from being parted in this manner. Then I entered into the
manner of peoples going over to those countries to settle,
how they had a quantity of land given them by the Constitution
of the place; and if not, that it might be purchased at so easy a
rate this it was not worth naming.

I then gave him a full and distinct account of the nature of
planting; how with carrying over but two or three hundred
pounds value in English goods, with some servants and tools,
a man of application would presently lay a foundation for a
family, and in a very few years be certain to raise an estate.

I let him into the nature of the product of the earth; how the
ground was cured and prepared, and what the usual increase
of it was; and demonstrated to him, that in a very few years,
with such a beginning, we should be as certain of being rich
as we were now certain of being poor.

He was surprised at my discourse; for we made it the whole
subject of our conversation for near a week together, in which
time I laid it down in black and white, as we say, that it was
morally impossible, with a supposition of any reasonable good
conduct, but that we must thrive there and do very well.

Then I told him what measures I would take to raise such a
sum of #300 or thereabouts; and I argued with him how good
a method it would be to put an end to our misfortunes and
restore our circumstances in the world, to what we had both
expected; and I added, that after seven years, if we lived, we
might be in a posture to leave our plantations in good hands,
and come over again and receive the income of it, and live
here and enjoy it; and I gave him examples of some that had
done so, and lived now in very good circumstances in London.

In short, I pressed him so to it, that he almost agreed to it, but
still something or other broke it off again; till at last he turned
the tables, and he began to talk almost to the same purpose of
Ireland.

He told me that a man that could confine himself to country
life, and that could find but stock to enter upon any land,
should have farms there for #50 a year, as good as were here
let for #200 a year; that the produce was such, and so rich the
land, that if much was not laid up, we were sure to live as
handsomely upon it as a gentleman of #3000 a year could do
in England and that he had laid a scheme to leave me in London,
and go over and try; and if he found he could lay a handsome
foundation of living suitable to the respect he had for me, as
he doubted not he should do, he would come over and fetch me.

I was dreadfully afraid that upon such a proposal he would
have taken me at my word, viz. to sell my little income as I
called it, and turn it into money, and let him carry it over into
Ireland and try his experiment with it; but he was too just to
desire it, or to have accepted it if I had offered it; and he
anticipated me in that, for he added, that he would go and try
his fortune that way, and if he found he could do anything at
it to live, then, by adding mine to it when I went over, we
should live like ourselves; but that he would not hazard a
shilling of mine till he had made the experiment with a little,
and he assured me that if he found nothing to be done in Ireland,
he would then come to me and join in my project for Virginia.

He was so earnest upon his project being to be tried first, that
I could not withstand him; however, he promised to let me
hear from him in a very little time after his arriving there, to
let me know whether his prospect answered his design, that
if there was not a possibility of success, I might take the
occasion to prepare for our other voyage, and then, he assured
me, he would go with me to America with all his heart.

I could bring him to nothing further than this. However, those
consultations entertained us near a month, during which I
enjoyed his company, which indeed was the most entertaining
that ever I met in my life before. In this time he let me into
the whole story of his own life, which was indeed surprising,
and full of an infinite variety sufficient to fill up a much brighter
history, for its adventures and incidents, than any I ever say in
print; but I shall have occasion to say more of him hereafter.

We parted at last, though with the utmost reluctance on my
side; and indeed he took his leave very unwillingly too, but
necessity obliged him, for his reasons were very good why he
would not come to London, as I understood more fully some
time afterwards.

I gave him a direction how to write to me, though still I
reserved the grand secret, and never broke my resolution,
which was not to let him ever know my true name, who I was,
or where to be found; he likewise let me know how to write a
letter to him, so that, he said, he would be sure to receive it.

I came to London the next day after we parted, but did not go
directly to my old lodgings; but for another nameless reason
took a private lodging in St. John's Street, or, as it is vulgarly
called, St. Jones's, near Clerkenwell; and here, being perfectly
alone, I had leisure to sit down and reflect seriously upon the
last seven months' ramble I had made, for I had been abroad
no less. The pleasant hours I had with my last husband I looked
back on with an infinite deal of pleasure; but that pleasure was
very much lessened when I found some time after that I was
really with child.

This was a perplexing thing, because of the difficulty which
was before me where I should get leave to lie in; it being one of
the nicest things in the world at that time of day for a woman
that was a stranger, and had no friends, to be entertained in
that circumstance without security, which, by the way, I had
not, neither could I procure any.

I had taken care all this while to preserve a correspondence
with my honest friend at the bank, or rather he took care to
correspond with me, for he wrote to me once a week; and
though I had not spent my money so fast as to want any from
him, yet I often wrote also to let him know I was alive. I had
left directions in Lancashire, so that I had these letters, which
he sent, conveyed to me; and during my recess at St. Jones's
received a very obliging letter from him, assuring me that his
process for a divorce from his wife went on with success,
though he met with some difficulties in it that he did not expect.

I was not displeased with the news that his process was more
tedious than he expected; for though I was in no condition to
have him yet, not being so foolish to marry him when I knew
myself to be with child by another man, as some I know have
ventured to do, yet I was not willing to lose him, and, in a
word, resolved to have him if he continued in the same mind,
as soon as I was up again; for I saw apparently I should hear
no more from my husband; and as he had all along pressed to
marry, and had assured me he would not be at all disgusted at
it, or ever offer to claim me again, so I made no scruple to
resolve to do it if I could, and if my other friend stood to his
bargain; and I had a great deal of reason to be assured that he
would stand to it, by the letters he wrote to me, which were
the kindest and most obliging that could be.

I now grew big, and the people where I lodged perceived it,
and began to take notice of it to me, and, as far as civility
would allow, intimated that I must think of removing. This
put me to extreme perplexity, and I grew very melancholy, for
indeed I knew not what course to take. I had money, but no
friends, and was like to have a child upon my hands to keep,
which was a difficult I had never had upon me yet, as the
particulars of my story hitherto make appear.

In the course of this affair I fell very ill, and my melancholy
really increased my distemper; my illness proved at length to
be only an ague, but my apprehensions were really that I should
miscarry. I should not say apprehensions, for indeed I would
have been glad to miscarry, but I could never be brought to
entertain so much as a thought of endeavouring to miscarry,
or of taking any thing to make me miscarry; I abhorred, I say,
so much as the thought of it.

However, speaking of it in the house, the gentlewoman who
kept the house proposed to me to send for a midwife. I
scrupled it at first, but after some time consented to it, but
told her I had no particular acquaintance with any midwife,
and so left it to her.

It seems the mistress of the house was not so great a stranger
to such cases as mine was as I thought at first she had been,
as will appear presently, and she sent for a midwife of the
right sort--that is to say, the right sort for me.

The woman appeared to be an experienced woman in her
business, I mean as a midwife; but she had another calling too,
in which she was as expert as most women if not more. My
landlady had told her I was very melancholy, and that she
believed that had done me harm; and once, before me, said to
her, 'Mrs. B----' (meaning the midwife), 'I believe this lady's
trouble is of a kind that is pretty much in your way, and
therefore if you can do anything for her, pray do, for she is a
very civil gentlewoman'; and so she went out of the room.

I really did not understand her, but my Mother Midnight began
very seriously to explain what she mean, as soon as she was
gone. 'Madam,' says she, 'you seem not to understand what
your landlady means; and when you do understand it, you need
not let her know at all that you do so.

'She means that you are under some circumstances that may
render your lying in difficult to you, and that you are not willing
to be exposed. I need say no more, but to tell you, that if you
think fit to communicate so much of your case to me, if it be so,
as is necessary, for I do not desire to pry into those things, I
perhaps may be in a position to help you and to make you
perfectly easy, and remove all your dull thoughts upon that
subject.'

Every word this creature said was a cordial to me, and put
new life and new spirit into my heart; my blood began to
circulate immediately, and I was quite another body; I ate my
victuals again, and grew better presently after it. She said a
great deal more to the same purpose, and then, having pressed
me to be free with her, and promised in the solemnest manner
to be secret, she stopped a little, as if waiting to see what
impression it made on me, and what I would say.

I was to sensible too the want I was in of such a woman, not
to accept her offer; I told her my case was partly as she
guessed, and partly not, for I was really married, and had a
husband, though he was in such fine circumstances and so
remote at that time, as that he could not appear publicly.

She took me short, and told me that was none of her business;
all the ladies that came under her care were married women
to her. 'Every woman,' she says, 'that is with child has a father
for it,' and whether that father was a husband or no husband,
was no business of hers; her business was to assist me in my
present circumstances, whether I had a husband or no. 'For,
madam,' says she, 'to have a husband that cannot appear, is
to have no husband in the sense of the case; and, therefore,
whether you are a wife or a mistress is all one to me.'

I found presently, that whether I was a whore or a wife, I was
to pass for a whore here, so I let that go. I told her it was
true, as she said, but that, however, if I must tell her my case,
I must tell it her as it was; so I related it to her as short as I
could, and I concluded it to her thus. 'I trouble you with all
this, madam,' said I, 'not that, as you said before, it is much
to the purpose in your affair, but this is to the purpose, namely,
that I am not in any pain about being seen, or being public or
concealed, for 'tis perfectly indifferent to me; but my difficulty
is, that I have no acquaintance in this part of the nation.'

'I understand you, madam' says she; 'you have no security to
bring to prevent the parish impertinences usual in such cases,
and perhaps,' says she, 'do not know very well how to dispose
of the child when it comes.'  'The last,' says I, 'is not so much
my concern as the first.'  'Well, madam,' answered the midwife,
'dare you put yourself into my hands? I live in such a place;
though I do not inquire after you, you may inquire after me.
My name is B----; I live in such a street'--naming the street--'
at the sign of the Cradle. My profession is a midwife, and I
have many ladies that come to my house to lie in. I have given
security to the parish in general terms to secure them from any
charge from whatsoever shall come into the world under my
roof. I have but one question to ask in the whole affair, madam,'
says she, 'and if that be answered you shall be entirely easy for
all the rest.'

I presently understood what she meant, and told her, 'Madam,
I believe I understand you. I thank God, though I want friends
in this part of the world, I do not want money, so far as may
be necessary, though I do not abound in that neither': this I
added because I would not make her expect great things.
'Well, madam,' says she, 'that is the thing indeed, without
which nothing can be done in these cases; and yet,' says she,
'you shall see that I will not impose upon you, or offer anything
that is unkind to you, and if you desire it, you shall know
everything beforehand, that you may suit yourself to the
occasion, and be neither costly or sparing as you see fit.'

I told her she seemed to be so perfectly sensible of my condition,
that I had nothing to ask of her but this, that as I had told her
that I had money sufficient, but not a great quantity, she would
order it so that I might be at as little superfluous charge as
possible.

She replied that she would bring in an account of the expenses
of it in two or three shapes, and like a bill of fare, I should
choose as I pleased; and I desired her to do so.

The next day she brought it, and the copy of her three bills
was a follows:--

1. For three months' lodging in her house, including
my diet, at 10s. a week . . . . . .6#, 0s., 0d.

2. For a nurse for the month, and use of childbed
linen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1#, 10s., 0d.

3. For a minister to christen the child, and to the
godfathers and clerk . . . . . . . .1#, 10s., 0d.

4. For a supper at the christening if I had five friends
at it . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1#, 0s., 0d.

For her fees as a midwife, and the taking off the
trouble of the parish . . . . . . . . 3#, 3s., 0d.

To her maid servant attending . 0#, 10s., 0d.
                                                ________________
                                                 13#, 13s. 0d

This was the first bill; the second was the same terms:--

1. For three months' lodging and diet, etc., at 20s.
per week . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13#, 0s., 0d.

2. For a nurse for the month, and the use of linen
and lace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2#, 10s., 0d.

3. For the minister to christen the child, etc., as
above . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2#, 0s., 0d.

4. For supper and for sweetmeats
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3#, 3s., 0d.

For her fees as above . . . . . . 5#, 5s., 0d.

For a servant-maid . . . . . . . . 1#, 0s., 0d.
                                              _______________
                                               26#, 18s., 0d

This was the second-rate bill; the third, she said, was for
a degree higher, and when the father or friends appeared:--

1. For three months' lodging and diet, having two
rooms and a garret for a servant . . 30#, 0s., 0d.,

2. For a nurse for the month, and the finest suit
of childbed linen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4#, 4s., 0d.

3. For the minister to christen the child, etc.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2#, 10s., 0d.

4. For a super, the gentlemen to send in the
wine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6#, 0s., 0d.

For my fees, etc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10#, 10s., 0d.

The maid, besides their own maid, only
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0#, 10s., 0d.
                                                      _________________
                                                       53#, 14s., 0d.

I looked upon all three bills, and smiled, and told her I did not
see but that she was very reasonable in her demands, all things
considered, and for that I did not doubt but her  accommodations
were good.

She told me I should be judge of that when I saw them. I told
her I was sorry to tell her that I geared I must be her lowest-
rated customer. 'And perhaps, madam,' said I, 'you will make
me the less welcome upon that account.'  'No, not at all,' said
she; 'for where I have one of the third sort I have two of the
second, and four to one of the first, and I get as much by them
in proportion as by any; but if you doubt my care of you, I will
allow any friend you have to overlook and see if you are well
waited on or no.'

Then she explained the particulars of her bill. 'In the first place,
madam,' said she, 'I would have you observe that here is three
months' keeping; you are but ten shillings a week; I undertake
to say you will not complain of my table. I suppose,' says she,
'you do not live cheaper where you are now?'  'No, indeed,'
said I, 'not so cheap, for I give six shillings per week for my
chamber, and find my own diet as well as I can, which costs
me a great deal more.'

'Then, madam,' says she, 'if the child should not live, or should
be dead-born, as you know sometimes happens, then there is
the minister's article saved; and if you have no friends to come
to you, you may save the expense of a supper; so that take those
articles out, madam,' says she, 'your lying in will not cost you
above #5, 3s. in all more than your ordinary charge of  living.'

This was the most reasonable thing that I ever heard of; so I
smiled, and told her I would come and be her customer; but I
told her also, that as I had two months and more to do, I might
perhaps be obliged to stay longer with her than three months,
and desired to know if she would not be obliged to remove me
before it was proper. No, she said; her house was large, and
besides, she never put anybody to remove, that had lain in, till
they were willing to go; and if she had more ladies offered, she
was not so ill-beloved among her neighbours but she could
provide accommodations for twenty, if there was occasion.

I found she was an eminent lady in her way; and, in short, I
agreed to put myself into her hands, and promised her. She
then talked of other things, looked about into my accommodations
where I was, found fault with my wanting attendance and
conveniences, and that I should not be used so at her house.
I told her I was shy of speaking, for the woman of the house
looked stranger, or at least I thought so, since I had been ill,
because I was with child; and I was afraid she would put some
affront or other upon me, supposing that I had been able to
give but a slight account of myself.

'Oh dear,' said she, 'her ladyship is no stranger to these things;
she has tried to entertain ladies in your condition several times,
but she could not secure the parish; and besides, she is not such a
nice lady as you take her to be; however, since you are a-going,
you shall not meddle with her, but I'll see you are a little better
looked after while you are here than I think you are, and it shall
not cost you the more neither.'

I did not understand her at all; however, I thanked her, and  so
we parted. The next morning she sent me a chicken roasted
and hot, and a pint bottle of sherry, and ordered the maid to
tell me that she was to wait on me every day as long as I stayed
there.

This was surprisingly good and kind, and I accepted it very
willingly. At night she sent to me again, to know if I wanted
anything, and how I did, and to order the maid to come to her
in the morning with my dinner. The maid  had orders to make
me some chocolate in the morning before she came away, and
did so, and at noon she brought me the sweetbread of a breast
of veal, whole, and a dish of soup for my dinner; and after this
manner she nursed me up at a distance, so that I was mightily
well pleased, and quickly well, for indeed my dejections before
were the principal part of my illness.

I expected, as is usually the case among such people, that the
servant she sent me would have been some imprudent brazen
wench of Drury Lane breeding, and I was very uneasy at having
her with me upon that account; so I would not let her lie in
that house the first night by any means, but had my eyes about
me as narrowly as if she had been a public thief.

My gentlewoman guessed presently what was the matter, and
sent her back with a short note, that I might depend upon the
honesty of her maid; that she would be answerable for her upon
all accounts; and that she took no servants into her house
without very good security for their fidelity. I was then perfectly
easy; and indeed the maid's behaviour spoke for itself, for a
modester, quieter, soberer girl never came into anybody's family,
and I found her so afterwards.

As soon as I was well enough to go abroad, I went with the
maid to