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Title: Memoirs Of Fanny Hill
       A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749)

Author: John Cleland

Release Date: May 2, 2008 [EBook #25305]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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MEMOIRS OF FANNY HILL

By John Cleland

_A new and genuine edition from the original text (London, 1749)._

PARIS - ISIDORE LISEUX

Of this Edition, privately printed, there are 350 numbered copies, of
which this is number 111.




LETTER THE FIRST

I sit down to give you an undeniable proof of my considering your
desires as indispensable orders. Ungracious then as the task may be, I
shall recall to view those scandalous stages of my life, out of which I
emerged, at length, to the enjoyment of every blessing in the power of
love, health and fortune to bestow; whilst yet in the flower of youth,
and not too late to employ the leisure afforded me by great ease and
affluence, to cultivate an understanding, naturally not a despicable
one, and which had, even amidst the whirl of loose pleasures I had been
tossed in, exerted more observation on the characters and manners of
the world than what is common to those of my unhappy profession, who,
looking on all though or reflection as their capital enemy, keep it at
as great a distance as they can, or destroy it without mercy.

Hating, as I mortally do, all long unnecessary prefaces, I shall give
you good quarter in this, and use no farther apology, than to prepare
you for seeing the loose part of my life, written with the same liberty
that I led it.

Truth! stark, naked truth, is the word; and I will not so much as
take the pains to bestow the strip of a gauze wrapper on it, but paint
situations such as they actually rose to me in nature, careless of
violating those laws of decency that were never made for such unreserved
intimacies as ours; and you have too much sense, too much knowledge of
the originals, to sniff prudishly and out of character at the pictures
of them. The greatest men, those of the first and most leading taste,
will not scruple adorning their private closets with nudities, though,
in compliance with vulgar prejudices, they may not think them decent
decorations of the staircase, or salon.

This, and enough, premised, I go souse into my personal history.
My maiden name was Frances Hill. I was born at a small village near
Liverpool, in Lancashire, of parents extremely poor, and, I piously
believe, extremely honest.

My father, who had received a maim on his limbs, that disabled him
from following the more laborious branches of country drudgery, got,
by making nets, a scanty subsistence, which was not much enlarged by my
mother's keeping a little day-school for the girls in her neighborhood.
They had had several children; but none lived to any age except myself,
who had received from nature a constitution perfectly healthy.

My education, till past fourteen, was no better than very vulgar:
reading, or rather spelling, an illegible scrawl, and a little ordinary
plain work, composed the whole system of it; and then all my foundation
in virtue was no other than a total ignorance of vice, and the shy
timidity general to our sex, in the tender age of life, when objects
alarm or frighten more by their novelty than anything else. But then,
this is a fear too often cured at the expense of innocence, when Miss,
by degrees, begins no longer to look on a man as a creature of prey that
will eat her.

My poor mother had divided her time so entirely between her scholars
and her little domestic cares, that she had spared very little to my
instruction, having, from her own innocence from all ill, no hint or
thought of guarding me against any.

I was now entering on my fifteenth year, when the worst of ills befell
me in the loss of my fond, tender parents, who were both carried off by
the small-pox, within a few days of each other; my father dying first,
and thereby by hastening the death of my mother: so that I was now left
an unhappy friendless orphan (for my father's coming to settle there,
was accidental, he being originally a Kentisrman). That cruel distemper
which had proved so fatal to them, had indeed seized me, but with such
mild and favourable symptoms, that I was presently out of danger, and
what then I did not know the value of, was entirely unmarked I skip over
here an account of the natural grief and affliction which I felt on
this melancholy occasion. A little time, and the giddiness of that age,
dissipated too soon my reflections on that irreparable loss; but nothing
contributed more to reconcile me to it, than the notions that were
immediately put into my head, of going to London, and looking out for
a service, in which I was promised all assistance and advice from one
Esther Davis, a young woman that had beer down to see her friends, and
who, after the stay of a few days, was returned to her place.

As I had now nobody left alive in the village, who had concerned enough
about what should become of me, to start any objections to this scheme,
and the woman who took care of me after my parents' death, rather
encouraged me to pursue it, I soon came to a resolution of making this
launch into the wide world, by repairing to London, in order to seek my
fortune, a phrase which, by the bye, has ruined more adventurers of both
sexes, from the country, than ever it made or advanced.

Nor did Esther Davis a little comfort and inspirit me to venture with
her, by piquing my childish curiosity with the fine sights that were to
be seen in London: the Tombs, the Lions, the King, the Royal Family,
the fine Plays and Operas, and, in short, all the diversions which fell
within her sphere of life to come at; the detail of all which perfectly
turned the little head of me.

Nor can I remember, without laughing, the innocent admiration, not
without a spice of envy, with which we poor girls, whose church-going
clothes did not rise above dowlas shifts and stuff gowns, beplaced with
silver: all which we imagined grew in London, and entered for a great
deal into my determination of trying to come in for my share of them.

The idea however of having the company of a towns-woman with her, was
the trivial, and all the motives that engaged Esther to take charge of
me during my journey to town, where she told me, after the manner and
style, "as how several maids out of the country had made themselves and
all their kind for ever: that by preserving their virtue, some had
taken so with their masters, that they had married them, and kept them
coaches, and lived vastly grand and happy; and some, may-hap, came to be
Duchesses; luck was all, and why not I, as well as another?"; with other
almanacs to this purpose, which set me a tip-toe to begin this promising
journey, and to leave a place which, though my native one, contained no
relations that I had reason to regret, and was grown insupportable to
me, from the change of the tenderest usage into a cold air of charity,
with which I was entertained, even at the only friend's house that I had
the least expectation of care and protection from. She was, however, so
just to me, as to manage the turning into money the little matters that
remained to me after the debts and burial charges were allowed for, and,
at my departure, put my whole fortune into my hands; which consisted
of a very slender wardrobe, packed up in a very portable box, and eight
guineas, with seventeen shillings in silver, stowed in a spring-pouch,
which was a greater treasure than I ever had seen together, and which I
could not conceive there was a possibility of running out; and indeed, I
was so entirely taken up with the joy of seeing myself mistress of such
an immence sum, that I gave very little attention to a world of good
advice which was given me with it.

Places, then, being taken for Esther and me in the Chester waggon, I
pass over a very immaterial scene of leave-taking, at which I droped
a few tears betwixt grief and joy; and, for the same reasons of
insignificance, skip over all that happened to me on the road, such as
the waggoner's looking liquorish on me, the schemes laid for me by some
of the passengers, which were defeated by the valiance of my guardian
Esther; who, to do her justice, took a motherly care of me, at the
same time that she taxed me for the protection by making me bear all
travelling charges, which I defrayed with the unmost cheerfulness, and
thought myself much obliged to her into the bargain.

She took indeed great care that we were not overrated, or imposed on, as
well as of managing as frugally as possible; expensiveness was not her
vice.

It was pretty late in a summer evening when we reached the town, in our
slow conveyance, though drawn by six at length. As we passed through
the greatest streets that led to our inn, the noise, of the coaches, the
hurry, the crowds of foot passengers, in short, the new scenery of the
shops and houses, at once pleased and amazed me.

But guess at my mortification and surprise when we came to the inn, and
our things were landed and delivered to us, when my fellow traveller and
protectress, Esther Davis, who had used me with the utmost tenderness
during the journey, and prepared me by no preceedings signs for the
stunning blow I was to receive, when I say, my only dependence and
friend, in this strange place, all of a sudden assumed a strange and
cool air towards me, as if she dreaded my becoming a burden to her.

Instead, then, of proffering me the continuance of her assistance and
good offices, which I relied upon, and never more wanted, she thought
herself, it seems, abundantly acquitted of her engagements to me, by
having brought me safe to my journey's end, and seeing nothing in her
procedure towards me but what natural and in order, began to embrace me
by the way of taking leave, whilst I was so confounded, so struck,
that I had not spirit or sense enough so much as to mention my hopes
or expectations from her experience, and knowledge of the place she had
brought me to.

Whilst I stood thus stupid and mute, which she doubtless attributed to
nothing more than a concern at parting, this idea procured me perhaps a
slight alleviation of it, in the following harangue: "That now we were
got safe to London, and that she was obliged to go to her place, she
advised me by all means to get into one as soon as possible; that I need
not fear getting one; there were more places than parish-churches; that
she advised me to go to an intelligence office; that if she heard of
any thing stirring, she would find me out and let me know; that in the
meantime, I should take a private lodging, and acquaint her where to
send to me; that she wished me good luck, and hoped I should always
have the grace to keep myself honest, and not bringing a disgrace on
my parentage." With this; she took her leave of me, and left me, as it
were, on my own hands, full as lightly as I had been put into hers.

Left thus alone, absolutely destitute and friendless I began then to
feel most bitterly the severity of this separation, the scene of which
had passed in a little room in the inn; and no sooner was her back
turned, but the affliction I felt at my helpless strange circumstances,
burst out into a flood of tears, which infinitely relieved the oppression
of my heart; though I still remained stupified, and most perfectly
perplexed how to dispose of myself.

One of the waiters coming in, added yet more to my uncertainty, by
asking me, in a short way, if I called for anything? to which I replied
innocently: "No." But I wished him to tell me where I might get a
lodging for that night. He said he would go and speak to his mistress,
who accordingly came, and told me drily, without entering in the least
into the distress she saw me in, that I might have a bed for a shilling,
and that, as she supposed I had some friends in town (there I fetched a
deep sigh in vain!), I might provide for myself in the morning.

It is incredible what trifling consolations the human mind will seize
in its greatest afflictions. The assurance of nothing more than a bed to
lie on that night, calmed my agonies; and being ashamed to acquaint
the mistress of the inn that I had no friends to apply to in town, I
proposed to myself to proceed, the very next morning, to an intelligence
office, to which I was furnished with written directions on the back of
a ballad, Esther had given me. There I counted on getting information
of any place that such a country girl as I might be fit for, and where
I could get into any sort of being, before my little stock should be
consumed; and as to a character, Esther had often repeated to me, that I
might depend on her managing me one; nor, however affected I was at
her leaving me thus, did I entirely cease to rely on her, as I began to
think, good-naturedly, that her procedure was all in course, and that is
was only my ignorance of life that had made me take it in the light I at
first did.

Accordingly, the next morning I dressed myself as clean and as neat as
my rustic wardrobe would permit me; and having left my box, with special
recommendation, with the landlady, I ventured out by myself, and without
any more difficulty than can be supposed of a young country girl, barely
fifteen, and to whom every sign or shop was a gazing trap, I got to the
wished for intelligence office.

It was kept by an elderly woman, who sat at the receipt of custom, with
a book before her in great form and order, and several scrolls made out,
of directions for places.

I made up then to this important personage, without lifting up my eyes
or observing any of the people round me, who were attending there on the
same errand as myself, and dropping her curtsies nine deep, just made a
shift to stammer out my business to her.

Madam heard me out, with all the gravity and brow of a petty minister
of State, and seeing at one glance over my figure what I was, made me no
answer, but to ask me the preliminary shilling, on receipt of which she
told me places for women too slight built for hard work: but that she
would look over her book, and see what was to be done for me, desiring
me to stay a little, till she had dispatched some other customers.

On this I drew back a little, most heartily mortified at a declaration
which carried with it a killing uncertainly, that my circumstances could
not well endure.

Presently, assuming more courage, and seeking some diversion from my
uneasy thoughts, I ventured to lift up my head a little, and sent my
eyes on a course round the room, where they met full tilt with those
of a lady (for such my extreme innocence pronounced her) sitting in a
corner of the room, dressed in a velvet mantle (in the midst of summer),
with her bonnet off; squat, fat, red-faced, and at least fifty.

She looked as if she would devour me with her eyes, staring at me from
head to foot, without the least regard to the confusion and blushes her
eyeing me so fixedly put me to, and which were to her, no doubt, the
strongest recommendation and marks of my being fit for her purpose.
After a little time, in which my air, person and whole figure had
undergone a strict examination, which I had, on my part, tried to render
favourable to me, by primming, drawing up my neck, and setting my best
looks, she advanced and spoke to me with the greatest demureness:

"Sweet-heart, do you want a place?

"Yes, and please you," (with a curtsey down to the ground).

Upon this she acquainted me she was actually come to the office herself,
to look out for a servant; that she believed I might do, with a little
of her instruction; that she could take my very looks for a sufficient
character; that London was a very wicked, vile, place; that she hoped I
would be tractable, and keep out of bad company; in short, she said all
to me that an old experienced practitioner in town could think of,
and which was much more than was necessary to take in an artless
inexperienced country maid, who was even afraid of becoming a wanderer
about the streets, and therefore gladly jumped at the first offer of a
shelter, especially from so grave and matron-like a lady, for such
my flattering fancy assured me this new mistress of mine was, I being
actually hired under the nose of the good woman that kept the office,
whose shrewed smiles and shrugs I could not help observing, and
innocently interpreted them as marks of being pleased at my getting
into place so soon: but, as I afterwards came to know, these Beldams
understood one another very well, and this was a market where Mrs.
Brown, my mistress, frequently attended, on the watch for any fresh
goods that might offer there, for the use of her customers, and her own
profit.

Madam was, however, so well pleased with her bargain that fearing I
presume, lest better advice or some accident might occasion my slipping
through her fingers, she would officiously take me in a coach to my inn,
where, calling herself for my box, it was, I being present, delivered
without the least scruple or explanation as to where I was going.

This being over, she bid the coachman drive to a shop in St. Paul's
Churchyard, where she bought a pair of gloves, which she gave me, and
thence renewed her directions to the coachman to drive to her house in
------ street, who accordingly landed us at the door, after I had been
cheered up and entertained by the way with the most plausible flams,
without one syllable from which I could conclude anything but that I was,
by the greatest luck, fallen into the hands of kindest mistress, not to
say friend, that the vast world could afford; and accordingly I entered
her doors with most complete confidence and exultation, promising,
myself that, as soon as I could be a little settled, I would acquaint
Esther Davis with my rare good fortune.

You may be sure the good opinion of my place was not lessened by the
appearance of a very handsome back parlor, into which I was led and
which seemed to me magnificently furnished, who had never seen better
rooms than the ordinary ones in inns upon the road. There were two gilt
pier-glasses, and a buffet, on which a few pieces of plate, set out to
the most shew, dazzled, and altogether persuaded me that I must be got
into a very reputable family.

Here my mistress first began her part, with telling me that I must have
good spirits, and learn to be free with her; that she had not taken me
to be a common servant, to do domestic drudgery, but to be a kind of
companion to her; and that if I would be a good girl, she would do
more than twenty mothers for me; to all which I answered only by the
profoundest and the awkwardest curtsies, and a few monosyllables, such
as "'yes! no! to be sure!"

Presently my mistress touched the bell, and in came a strapping
maid-servant, who had let us in. "Here, Martha," said Mrs. Brown, "I
have just hired this young woman to look after my linen; so step up and
show her her chamber; and I charge you to use her with as much respect
as you would myself, for I have taken a prodigious liking to her, and I
do not know what I shall do for her."

Martha, who was an arch-jade, and, being used to this decoy, had her
cue perfect, made me a kind of half curtsy, and asked me to walk up
with her; and accordingly showed me a neat room, two pair of stairs
backwards, in which there was a handsome bed, where Martha told me I was
to lie with a young gentlewoman, a cousin of my mistress, who she was
sure would be vastly good to me. Then she ran out into such affected
encomiums on her good mistress! her sweet mistress! and how happy I
was to light upon her! and that I could not have bespoke a better; with
other the like gross stuff, such as would itself have started suspicions
in any but such an unpractised simpleton, who was perfectly new to
life, and who took every word she said in the very sense she laid out
for me to take it; but she readily saw what a penetration she had to
deal with, and measured me very rightly in her manner of whistling to
me, so as to make me pleased with my cage, and blind to the wires.

In the midst of these false explanations of the nature of my future
service, we were rung for down again, and I was reintroduced into the
same parlour, where there was a table laid with three covers; and my
mistress had now got with her one of her favourite girls, a notable
manager of her house, and whose business it was to prepare and
break such young fillies as I was to the mounting block; and she was
accordingly, in that view, alloted me for a bed-fellow, and, to give her
the more authority, she had the title of cousin conferred on her by the
venerable president of this college.

Here I underwent a second survey, which ended in the full approbation
of Mrs. Phoebe Ayres, the name of my tutoress elect, to whose care and
instruction I was affectionately recommended.

Dinner was now set on table, and in pursuance of treating me as
a companion, Mrs. Brown, with a tone to cut off all dispute, soon
over-ruled my most humble and most confused protestations against
sitting down with her Ladyship, which my very short breeding just
suggested to me could not be right, or in the order of things.

At table, the conversation was chiefly kept up by the two madams and
carried on in double meaning expressions, interrupted every now and then
by kind assurances to me, all tending to confirm and fix my satisfaction
with my present condition: augment it they could not, so very a novice
was I then.

It was here agreed that I should keep myself up and out of sight for a
few days, till such clothes could be procured for me as were fit for
the character I was to appear in, of my mistress's companion, observing
withal, that on the first impressions of my figure much might depend;
and, as they rightly judged, the prospect of exchanging my country
clothes for London finery, made the clause of confinement digest
perfectly well with me. But the truth was, Mrs. Brown did not care that
I should be seen or talked to by any, either of her customers, or her
Does (as they called the girls provided for them), till she secured a
good market for my maidenhead, which I had at least all the appearances
of having brought into her Ladyship's service.

To slip over minutes of no importance to the main of my story, I pass
the interval to bed time, in which I was more and more pleased with the
views that opened to me, of an easy service under these good people; and
after supper being shewed up to bed, Miss Phoebe, who observed a kind
of reluctance in me to strip and go to bed, in my shift, before her, now
the maid was withdrawn, came up to me, and beginning with unpinning
my handkerchief and gown, soon encouraged me to go on with undressing
myself; and, blushing at now seeing myself naked to my shift, I hurried
to get under the bed-clothes out of sight.

Phoebe laughed and was not long before she placed herself by my side.
She was about five and twenty, by her most suspicious account, in which,
according to all appearances, she must have sunk at least ten good
years; allowance, too, being made for the havoc which a long course of
hackneyship and hot waters must have made of her constitution, and which
had already brought on, upon the spur, that stale stage in which those
of her profession are reduced to think of showing company, instead of
seeing it.

No sooner then was this precious substitute of my mistress laid down,
but she, who was never out of her way when any occasion of lewdness
presented itself, turned to me, embraced and kissed me with great
eagerness. This was new, this was odd; but imputing it to nothing but
pure kindness, which, for ought I knew, it might be the London way to
express in that manner, I was determined not to be behind-hand with her,
and returned her the kiss and embrace, with all the fervour that perfect
innocence knew.

Encouraged by this, her hands became extremely free, and wandered over
my whole body, with touches, squeezes, pressures, that rather warmed and
surprised me with their novelty, than they either shocked or alarmed me.

The flattering praises she intermingled with these invasions,
contributed also not a little to bribe my passiveness; and, knowing no
ill, I feared none, especially from one who had prevented all doubts
of her womanhood, by conducting my hands to a pair of breasts that hung
loosely down, in a size and volume that full sufficiently distinguished
her sex, to me at least, who had never made any other comparison.

I lay then all tame and passive as she could wish, whilst her freedom
raised no other emotion but those of a strange, and, till then, unfelt
pleasure. Every part of me was open and exposed to the licentious
courses of her hands, which, like a lambent fire, ran over my whole
body, and thawed all coldness as they went.

My breasts, if it is not too bold a figure to call so two hard, firm,
rising hillocks, that just began to shew themselves, or signify anything
to the touch, employed and amused her hands awhile, till, slipping down
lower, over a smooth track, she could just feel the soft silky down that
had but a few months before put forth and garnished the mount-pleasant
of those parts, and promised to spread a grateful shelter over the sweet
seat of the most exquisite sensation, and which had been, till that
instant, the seat of the most insensible innocence. Her fingers played
and strove to twine in the young tendrils of that moss, which nature has
contrived at once for use and ornament.

But, not contented with these outer posts, she now attempts the main
spot, and began to twitch, to insinuate, and at length to force an
introduction of a finger into the quick itself, in such a manner, that
had she not proceeded by insensible gradations that inflamed me beyond
the power of modesty to oppose its resistance to their progress, I
should have jumped out of bed and cried for help against such strange
assaults.

Instead of which, her lascivious touches had lighted up a new fire that
wantoned through all my veins, but fixed with violence in that center
appointed them by nature, where the first strange hands were now busied
in feeling, squeezing, compressing the lips, then opening them again,
with a finger between, till an "Oh!" expressed her hurting me, where the
narrowness of the unbroken passage refused it entrance to any depth.

In the meantime, the extension of my limbs, languid stretching, sighs,
short heavings, all conspired to as-ure that experienced wanton that I
was more pleased than offended at her proceedings, which she seasoned
with repeated kisses and exclamations, such as "Oh! what a charming
creature thou art! What a happy man will he be that first makes a woman
of you! Oh! that I were a man for your sake!" with the like broken
expressions, interrupted by kisses as fierce and salacious as ever I
received from the other sex.

For my part, I was transported, confused, and out of myself; feelings so
new were too much for me. My heated and alarmed senses were in a tumult
that robbed me of all liberty of thought; tears of pleasure gushed from
my eyes, and somewhat assuaged the fire that raged all over me.

Phoebe, herself, the hackneyed, thorough-bred Phoebe, to whom all modes
and devices of pleasure were known and familiar, found, it seems,
in this exercise her those arbitrary tastes, for which there is no
accounting. Not that she hated men, or did not even prefer them to her
own sex; but when she met with such occasions as this was, a satiety
of enjoyments in the common road, perhaps, too a great secret bias,
inclined her to make the most of pleasure, wherever she could find it,
without distinction of sexes. In this view, now well assured that she
had, by her touches, sufficiently inflamed me for her purpose, she
rolled down the bed clothes gently, and I saw myself stretched naked,
my shift being turned up to my neck, whilst I had no power or sense to
oppose it. Even my growing blushes expressed more desire than modesty,
whilst the candle, left (to be sure not undesignedly) burning, threw a
full light on my whole body.

"No!" says Phoebe, "you must not, my sweet girl, think to hide all these
treasures from me. My sight must be feasted as my touch. I must devour
with my eyes this springing bosom. Suffer me to kiss it. I have not seen
it enough. Let me kiss it once more. What firm, smooth, white flesh is
here! How delicately shaped! Then this delicious down! Oh! let me view
the small, dear, tender cleft! This is too much, I cannot bear it! I
must! I must!" Here she took my hand, and in a transport carried it
where you will easily guess. But what a difference in the state of the
same thing! A spreading thicket of bushy curls marked the full grown,
complete woman. Then the cavity to which she guided my hand easily
received it; and as soon as she felt it within her, she moved herself to
and fro, with so rapid a friction, that I presently withdrew it, wet
and clammy, when instantly Phoebe grew more composed, after two or
three sighs, and heart-fetched Oh's! and giving me a kiss that seemed to
exhale her soul through her lips, she replaced the bed-clothes over us.
What pleasure she had found I will not say; but this I know, that the
first sparks of kindling nature, the first ideas of pollution, were
caught by me that night; and that the acquaintance and communication
with the bad of our sex, is often as fatal to innocence as all the
seductions of the other. But to go on. When Phoebe was restored to that
calm, which I was far from the enjoyment of myself, she artfully sounded
me on all the points necessary to govern the designs of my virtuous
mistress on me, and by my answers, drawn from pure undissembled nature,
she had no reason but to promise herself all imaginable success, so far
as it depended on my ignorance, easiness and warmth of constitution.

After a sufficient length of dialogue, my bedfellow left me to my rest,
and I fell asleep, through pure weariness, from the violent emotions
I had been led into, when nature which had been too warmly stirred and
fermented to subside without allaying by some means or other relieved
me by one of those luscious dreams, the transports of which are scarce
inferior to those of waking real action.

In the morning I awoke about ten, perfectly gay and refreshed. Phoebe
was up before me, and asked me in the kindest manner how I did, how I
had rested, and if I was ready for breakfast? carefully, at the same
time, avoiding to increase the confusion she saw I was in, at looking
her in the face, by any hint of the night's bed scene. I told her if she
pleased I would get up, and begin any work she would be pleased to set
me about. She smiled; presently the maid brought in the tea equipage,
and I just huddled my clothes on, when in waddled my mistress. I
expected no less than to be told of, if not chid for, my late rising,
when I was most agreeably disappointed by her compliments on my pure
and fresh looks. I was "a bud of beauty" (this was her style), "and how
vastly all the fine men would admire me!" to all which my answers did
not, I can assure you, wrong my breeding; they were as simple and silly
as they could wish, and, no doubt, flattered them infinitely more than
had they proved me enlightened by education and a knowledge of the
world.

We breakfasted, and the tea things were scarce removed, when in were
brought two bundles of linen and wearing apparel: in short, all the
necessaries for rigging me out, as they termed it, completely.

Imagine to yourself, Madam, how my little coquet heart fluttered with
joy at the sight of a white lutestring, flowered with silver, scoured
indeed, but passed on me for spick and span new, a Brussels lace cap,
braited shoes, and the rest in proportion, all second-hand finery, and
procured instantly for the occasion, by the diligence and industry of
the good Mrs. Brown, who had already a chapman for me in the house,
before whom my charms were to pass in review; for he had not only,
in course, insisted on a previous sight of the premises, but also
on immediate surrendering to him, in case of his agreeing for me;
concluding very wisely, that such a place as I was in, was of the
hottest to trust the keeping of such a perishable commodity in, as a
maidenhead.

The care of dressing and tricking me out for the market, was then left
to Phoebe, who acquitted herself, if not well, at least perfectly to the
satisfaction of everything but my impatience of seeing myself dressed.
When it was over, and I viewed myself in the glass, I was no doubt, too
natural, too artless, to hide my childish joy at the change: a change,
in the real truth, for much the worse, since I must have much better
become the neat easy simplicity of my rustic dress than the awkward,
untoward, tawdry finery that I could not conceal my strangeness to.

Phoebe's compliments, however, in which her own share in dressing me was
not forgot, did not a little confirm me in the first notions I had ever
entertained concerning my person; which, be it said without vanity, was
then tolerable to justify a taste for me, and of which it may not be out
of place here to sketch you an unflattered picture.

I was tall, yet not too tall for my age, which, as I before remarked,
was barely turned of fifteen; my shape perfectly straight, thin waisted,
and light and free without owing anything to stays; my hair was a glossy
auburn, and as soft as silk, flowing down my neck in natural curls, and
did not a little to set off the whiteness of a smooth skin; my face was
rather too ruddy, though its features were delicate, and the shape was a
roundish oval, except where a pit on my chin had far from a disagreeable
effect; my eyes were as black as can be imagined, and rather languishing
than sparkling, except on certain occasions, when I have been told they
struck fire fast enough; my teeth, which I ever carefully preserved,
were small, even and white; my bosom was finely raised, and one might
then discern rather the promise than the actual growth of the round,
firm breast, that in a little time made that promise good. In short, all
the points of beauty that are most universally in request, I had, or at
least my vanity forbid me to appeal from the decision of our sovereign
judges the men, who all, that I ever knew at last, gave it thus highly
in my favour; and I met with, even in my own sex, some that were
above denying me that justice, whilst others praised me yet more
unsuspectedly, by endeavouring to detract from me, in points of person
and figure that I obviously excelled in. This is, I own, too strong
of self praise; but I should be ungrateful to nature, and to a form to
which I owe such singular blessings of pleasure and fortune, were I
to suppress, through an affectation of modesty, the mention of such
valuable gifts.

Well then, dressed I was, and little did it then enter into my head
that all this gay attire was no more than decking the victim out for
sacrifice, whilst I innocently attributed all to mere friendship and
kindness in the sweet good Mrs. Brown; who, I was forgetting to mention,
had, under pretence of keeping my money safe, got from me, without the
least hesitation, the driblet (so I now call it) which remained to me
after the expenses of my journey.

After some little time most agreebly spent before the glass, in scarce
self-admiration, since my new dress had by much the greatest share in
it, I was sent for down to the parlour, where the old lady saluted me,
and wished me joy of my new clothes, which she was not ashamed to say,
fitted me as if I had worn nothing but the finest all my life-time; but
what was it she could not see me silly enough to swallow? At the same
time, she presented me to another cousin of her own creation, an elderly
gentleman, who got up, at my entry into the room, and on my dropping a
curtsy to him, saluted me, and seemed a little affronted that I had
only presented my cheek to him: a mistake, which, if one, he immediately
corrected, by gluing his lips to mine, with an ardour which his figure
had not at all disposed me to thank him for: his figure, I say, than
which nothing could be more shocking or detestable: for ugly and
disagreeable were terms too gentle to convey a just idea of it.

Imagine to yourself, a man rather past threescore, short and ill-made,
with a yellow cadaverous hue, great goggle eyes, that stared as if he
was strangled; an out-mouth from two more properly tusks than teeth,
livid lips, and breath like a Jake's: then he had a peculiar ghastliness
in his grin, that made him perfectly frightful, if not dangerous to
women with child; yet, made as he was thus in mock of man, he was
so blind to his own staring deformities, as to think himself born to
please, and that no woman could see him with impunity: in consequence
of which idea, he had lavished great sums on such wretches as could gain
upon themselves to pretend love to his person, whilst to those who had
not art or patience to dissemble the horror it inspired, he behaved even
brutally. Impotence, more than necessity, made him seek in variety, the
provocative that was wanting to raise him to the pitch of enjoyment,
which he too often saw himself baulked of, by the failure of his powers:
and this always threw him into a fit of rage, which he wreaked, as far
as he durst, on the innocent objects of his fit of momentary desire.

This then was the master to which my conscientious benefactress, who had
long been his purveyor in this way, had doomed me, and sent for me down
purposely for his examination. Accordingly she made me stand up before
him, turned me round, unpinned my handkerchief, remarked to him the rise
and fall, the turn and whiteness of a bosom just beginning to fill; then
made me walk, and took even a handle from the rusticity of my charms: in
short, she omitted no point of jockeyship; to which he only answered by
gracious nods of approbation, whilst he looked goats and monkeys at
me: for I sometimes stole a corner glance at him, and encountering his
fiery, eager stare, looked another way from pure horror and affright,
which he, characteristically, attributed to nothing more than maiden
modesty, or at least the affectation of it.

However, I was soon dismissed, and reconducted to my room by Phoebe,
who stuck close to me, not leaving me alone, and at leisure to make such
reflections as might naturally rise to any one, not an idiot, on such a
scene as I had just gone through; but to my shame be it confessed, that
just was my invincible stupidity, or rather portentous innocence, that
I did not yet open my eyes to Mrs. Brown's designs, and saw nothing in
this titular cousin of hers but a shockingly hideous person, which did
not at all concern me, unless that my gratitude for my benefactress made
me extend my respect to all her cousinhood.

Phoebe, however, began to sift the state and pulses of my heart toward
this monster, asking me how I should approve of such a fine gentelman
for a husband. (Fine gentleman, I suppose she called him, from his being
daubed with lace.) I answered her very naturally, that I had no thoughts
of a husband, but that if I was to choose one, it should be among my own
degree, sure! so much had my aversion to that wretch's hideous figure
indisposed me to all "fine gentlemen," and confounded my ideas, as if
those of that rank had been necessarily cast in the same mould that
he was. But Phoebe was not to be put off so, but went on with her
endeavours to melt and soften me for the purposes of my reception into
that hospitable house: and whilst she talked of the sex in general, she
had no reason to despair of a compliance, which more than one reason
showed her would be easily enough obtained of me; but then she had too
much experience not to discover that my particular fixed aversion to
that frightful cousin would be a block not so readily to be removed, as
suited the consummation of their bargain, and sale of me.

Mother Brown had in the meantime agreed the terms with this loquorice
old goat, which I afterwards understood were to be fifty guineas
peremptory, for the liberty of attempting me, and a hundred more at the
complete gratification of his desires, in the triumph over my virginity:
and as for me, I was to be left entirely at the discretion of his liking
and generosity. This unrighteous contract being thus settled, he was so
eager to be put in possession, that he insisted on being introduced to
drink tea with me that afternoon, when we were to be left alone; nor
would he hearken to the procuress's remonstrances, that I was not
sufficiently prepared, and ripened for such an attack; that I was too
green and untamed, having been scarce twenty-four hours in the house:
it is the character of lust to be impatient, and his vanity arming him
against any supposition of other than the common resistance of a maid
on those occasions, made him reject all proposals of a delay, and my
dreadful trial was thus fixed, unknown to me, for that very evening.

At dinner, Mrs. Brown and Phoebe did nothing but run riot in praise of
this wonderful cousin, and how happy that woman would be that he would
favour with his addresses; in short my two gossips exhausted all
their rhetoric to persuade me to accept them: "that the gentleman was
violently smitten with me at first sight; that he would make my fortune
if I would be a good girl and not stand in my own light; that I should
trust his honour; that I should be made for ever, and have a chariot to
go abroad in," with all such stuff as was fit to turn the head of such
a silly ignorant girl as I then was: but luckily here my aversion had
taken already such deep root in me, my heart was so strongly defended
from him by my senses, that wanting the art to mask my sentiments, I
gave them no hopes of their employer succeeding, at least very easily,
with me. The glass too marched pretty quick, with a view, I suppose, to
make a friend of the warmth of my constitution, in the minutes of the
imminent attack.

Thus they kept me pretty long at table, and about six in the evening,
after I had retired to my apartment, and the tea board was set, enters
my venerable mistress, followed close by that satyr, who came in
grinning in a way peculiar to him, and by his odious presence, confirmed
me in all the sentiments of detestation which his first appearance had
given birth to.

He sat down fronting me, and all tea time kept ogling me in a manner
that gave me the utmost pain and confusion, all the mark of which he
still explained to be my bashfulness, and not being used to see company.

Tea over, the commoding old lady pleady urgent business (which indeed
was true) to go out, and earnestly desired me to entertain her cousin
kindly till she came back, both for my own sake and her; and then, with
a "Pray, sir, be very good, be very tender to the sweet child," she went
out of the room, leaving me staring, with my mouth open, and unprepared
by the suddenness of her departure, to oppose it.

We were now alone; and on that idea a sudden fit of trembling seized
me. I was so afraid, without a precise notion of why, and what I had
to fear, that I sat on the settee, by the fire side, motionless and
petrified, without life or spirit, not knowing how to look or how to
stir.

But long I was not suffered to remain in this state of stupefaction: the
monster squatted down by me on the settee, and without farther ceremony
or preamble, flings his arms about my neck, and drawing me pretty
forcibly towards him, obliged me to receive, in spite of my struggles
to disengage from him, his pestilential kisses, which quite overcame me.
Finding me then next to senseless, and unresisting, he tears off my neck
handkerchief, and laid all open there, to his eyes and hands: still
I endured all without flinching, till emboldened by my sufferance and
silence, for I had not the power to speak or cry out, he attempted to
lay me down on the settee, and I felt his hand on the lower part of my
naked thighs, which were crossed, and which he endeavoured to unlock. Oh
then! I was roused out of my passive endurance, and springing from him
with an activity he was not prepared for, threw myself at his feet, and
begged him, in the most moving tone, not to be rude, and that he would
not hurt me. "Hurt you, my dear?" says the brute, "I intend you no
harm. Has not the old lady told you that I love you? that I shall do
handsomely by you?"

"She has indeed, sir," said I, "but I cannot love you, indeed I cannot!
pray let me alone! yes! I will love you dearly if you will let me alone
and go away." But I was talking to the wind, for whether my tears,
my attitude, or the disorder of my dress proved fresh incentives, or
whether he was now under the dominion of desires he could not bridle,
but snorting and foaming with lust and rage, he renews his attack,
seizes me, and again attempts to extend and fix me on the settee:
in which he succeeded so far as to lay me along, and even to toss my
petticoats over my head, and lay my thighs bare, which I obstinately
kept close, nor could he, though he attempted with his knee to force
them open, effect it so as to stand fair for being master of the main
avenue; he was unbuttoned, both waistcoat and breeches, yet I only
felt the weight of his body upon me, whilst I lay struggling with
indignation, and dying with terrors; but he stopped all of a sudden, and
got off, panting, blowing, cursing, and repeating "old and ugly!" for so
I had very naturally called him in the heat of my defence.

The brute had, it seems, as I afterwards understood, brought on, by
his eagerness and struggle, the ultimate period of his hot fit of
lust, which his power was too short-lived to carry him through the full
execution of; of which my thighs and linen received the effusion.

When it was over he bid me, with a tone of displeasure, get up: "that he
would not do me the honour to think of me any more; that the old b----h
might look out for another cully; that he would not be fooled so by
ever a country mock modesty in England; that he supposed I had left my
maidenhead with some hobnail in the country, and was come to dispose of
my skim-milk in town" with a volley of the like abuse; which I listened
to with more pleasure than ever fond woman did to protestations of
love from her darling minion: for, incapable as I was of receiving any
addition to my perfect hatred and aversion to him, I looked on this
railing, as my security against his renewing his most odious caress.

Yet, plain as Mrs. Brown's views were now come out, I had not the
heart, or spirit to open my eyes to them: still I could not part with
my dependence on that beldam, so much did I think myself hers, soul and
body: or rather, I sought to deceive myself with the continuation of my
good opinion of her, and choose to wait the worst at her hands, sooner
than be turned out to starve in the streets, without a penny of money or
a friend to apply to these fears were my folly.

While this confusion of ideas was passing in my head, and I sat
pensively by the fire, with my eyes brimming with tears, my neck still
bare, and my cap fallen off in the struggle, so that my hair was in the
disorder you may guess, the villain's lust began, I suppose, to be again
in flow, at the sight of all that bloom of youth which presented itself
to his view, a bloom yet unenjoyed, and of course not yet indifferent to
him.

After some pause, he asked me with a tone of voice mightily softer,
whether I would make it up with him before the old lady returned, and
all should be well; he would restore me to his affections, at the
same time offering to kiss me and feel my breasts. But now my extreme
aversion, my fears, my indignation, all acting upon me, gave me a spirit
not natural to me, so that breaking loose from him, I ran to the bell
and rang it, with such violence and effect as to bring up the maid to
know what was the matter, or whether the gentleman wanted anything; and
before he could proceed to greater extremities, she bounced into the
room, and seeing me stretched on the floor, my hair all dishevelled, my
nose gushing out blood, which did not a little tragedize the scene, and
my odious persecutor still intent of pushing his brutal point, unmoved
by all my cries and distress, she was herself confounded and did not
know what to do.

As much, however, as Martha might be prepared and hardened to
transactions of this sort, all womanhood must have been out of her heart
could she have seen this unmoved. Besides that, on the face of things,
she imagined that matters had gone greater lengths than they really had,
and that the courtesy of the house had been actually consummated on me,
and flung: me into the condition I was in: in this notion she instantly
took my part, and advised the gentleman to go down and leave me to
recover myself, and "that all would be soon over with me; that when
Mrs. Brown and Phoebe, who were gone out, were returned, they would take
order for everything to his satisfaction; that nothing would be lost by
a little patience with the poor tender thing; that for her part she was
frightened; she could not tell what to say to such doings; but that she
would stay by me till my mistress came home." As the wench said all
this in a resolute tone, and the monster himself began to perceive that
things would not mend by his staying, he took his hat and went out of
the room murmuring and pitting his brows like an old ape, so that I was
delivered from the horrors of his detestable presence.

As soon as he was gone, Martha very tenderly offered me her assistance
in anything, and would have got me some hartshorn drops and put me to
bed; which last I, at first, positively refused, in the fear that the
monster might return and take me at that disadvantage. However, with
much persuasion and assurances that I should not be molested that night
she prevailed on me to lie down; and indeed I was so weakened by my
struggles, so dejected by my fearful apprehension, so terror-struck,
that I had not power to sit up, or hardly to give answers to the
questions with which the curious Martha plied and perplexed me.

Such too, and so cruel was my fate, that I dreaded the sight of Mrs.
Brown, as if I had been the criminal, and she the person injured; a
mistake which you will not think so strange, on distinguishing that
neither virtue nor principles had the least share in the defence I had
made, but only the particular aversion I had conceived against this
first brutal and frightful invader of my tender innocence.

I passed then the time till Mrs. Brown came home, under all the
agitations of fear and despair that may easily be guessed.

About eleven at night my two ladies came home, and having received
rather a favourable account from Martha, who had run down to let them
in, for Mr. Crofts (that was the name of my brute) was gone out of the
house, after waiting till he had tired his patience for Mrs. Brown's
return, they came thundering up stairs, and seeing me pale, my face
bloody, and all the marks of the most thorough dejection, they employed
themselves more to comfort and re-inspirit me than in making me the
reproaches I was weak enough to fear, I who had so many juster and
stronger to retort upon them.

Mrs. Brown withdrawn, Phoebe came presently to bed to me, and what
with the answers she drew from me, what with her own method of palpably
satisfying herself, she soon discovered that I had been more frightened
than hurt; upon which I suppose, being herself seized with sleep, and
reserving her lectures and instructions till the next morning, she left
me, properly speaking, to my unrest; for, later tossing and turning
the greatest part of the night, and tormenting myself with the falsest
notions and apprehensions of things, I fell, through mere fatigue into
a kind of delirious doze, out of which I waked late in the morning, in
a violent fever: a circumstance which was extremely critical to reprieve
me, at least for a time, from the attacks of a wretch, infinitely more
terrible to me than death itself.

The interested care that was taken of me during my illness, in order to
restore me to a condition of making good the bawd's engagements, or of
enduring further trials, had, however, such an effect on my grateful
disposition that I even thought myself obliged to my un-doers for their
attention to promote my recovery; and, above all, for the keeping out
of my sight of that brutal ravisher, the author of my disorder, on their
finding I was too strongly moved at the bare mention of his name.

Youth is soon raised, and a few days were sufficient to conquer the fury
of my fever: but, what contributed most to my perfect recovery and to my
reconciliation with life, was the timely news that Mr. Crofts, who was a
merchant of considerable dealings, was arrested at the King's suit,
for nearly forty thousand pounds, on account of his driving a certain
contraband trade, and that his affairs were so desperate, that even were
it in his inclination, it would not be in his power to renew his designs
upon me: for he was instantly thrown into a prison, which it was not
likely he would get out of in haste.

Mrs. Brown, who had touched his fifty guineas, advanced to so little
purpose, and lost all hopes of the remaining hundred, began to look upon
my treatment of him with a more favourable eye; and as they had observed
my temper to be perfectly tractable and conformable to their views, all
the girls that composed her flock were suffered to visit me, and had
their cue to dispose me, by their conversation, to a perfect resignation
of myself to Mrs. Brown's direction.

Accordingly they were let in upon me, and all that frolic and
thoughtless gaiety in which those giddy creatures consume either
leisure, made me envy a condition of which I only saw the fair side;
insomuch, that the being one of them became even my ambition: a
disposition which they all carefully cultivated; and I wanted now
nothing but to restore my health, that I might be able to undergo the
ceremony of the initiation.

Conversation, example, in short all, contributed, in that house, to
corrupt my native parity, which had taken no root in education; whilst
now the inflammable principal of pleasure, so easily fired at my age,
made strange work within me, and all the modesty I was brought up in the
habit, not the instruction of, began to melt away like dew before the
sun's heat; not to mention that I made a vice of necessity, from the
constant fears I had of being turned out to starve.

I was soon pretty well recovered, and at certain hours allowed to range
all over the house, but cautiously kept from seeing any company till the
arrival of Lord B----, from Bath, to whom Mrs. Brown, in respect to his
experienced generosity on such occasions, proposed to offer the perusal
of that trinket of mine, which bears so great an imaginary value; and
his lordship being expected in town in less than a fortnight, Mrs. Brown
judged I would be entirely renewed in beauty and freshness by that time,
and afforded her the chance of a better bargain than she had driven with
Mr. Crofts.

In the meantime, I was so thoroughly, as they call it, brought over, so
tame to their whistle, that, had my cage door been set open, I had no
idea that I ought to fly anywhere, sooner than stay where I was; nor had
I the least sense of regretting my condition, but waited very quietly
for whatever Mrs. Brown should order concerning me; who on her side, by
herself and her agents, took more than the necessary precautions to lull
and lay asleep all just reflections on my destiny.

Preachments of morality over the left shoulder; a life of joy painted in
the gayest colours; caresses, promises, indulgent treatment; nothing,
in short, was wanting to domesticate me entirely and to prevent my going
out anywhere to get better advice. Alas! I dreamed of no such thing.

Hitherto I had been indebted only to the girls of the house for the
corruption of my innocence: their luscious talk, in which modesty was
far from respected, their description of their engagements with men,
had given me a tolerable insight into the nature and mysteries of their
profession, at the same time that they highly provoked an itch of florid
warm-spirited blood through every vein: but above all, my bed fellow
Phoebe, whose pupil I more immediately was, exerted her talents in
giving me the first tinctures of pleasure: whilst nature, now warmed
and wantoned with discoveries so interesting, piqued a curiosity which
Phoebe artfully whetted, and leading me from question to question of her
own suggestion, explained to me all the mysteries of Venus. But I could
not long remain in such a house as that, without being an eye-witness of
more than I could conceive from her descriptions.

One day, about twelve at noon, being thoroughly recovered of my fever, I
happened to be in Mrs. Brown's dark closet, where I had not been half
an hour, resting upon the maid's bed, before I heard a rustling in the
bed-chamber, separated from the closet only by two sash doors, before
the glasses of which were drawn two yellow damask curtains, but not so
close as to exclude the full view of the room from any person in the
closet.

I instantly crept softly and posted myself so, that seeing everything
minutely, I could not myself be seen; and who should come in but the
venerable mother Abbess herself! handed in by a tall, brawny young
Horse-grenadiers, moulded in the Hercules style: in fine, the choice of
the most experienced dame, in those affairs, in all London.

Oh! how still and hush did I keep at my stand, lest any noise should
baulk my curiosity, or bring Madam into the closet!

But I had not much reason to fear either, for she was entirely taken up
with her present great concern, that she had no sense of attention to
spare to anything else.

Droll was it to see that clumsy fat figure of her's flop down on the
foot of the bed, opposite to the closet door so that I had a full front
view of all her charms.

Her paramour sat down by her: he seemed to be a man of very few words,
and a great stomach; for proceeding instantly to essentials, he gave her
some hearty smacks, and thrusting his hands into her breasts, disengaged
them from her stays, in scorn of whose confinement they broke loose, and
sagged down, navel-low at least. A more enormous pair did my eyes
never behold, nor of a worse colour, flagging, soft, and most lovingly
contiguous: yet such as they were, this great beef-eater seemed to paw
them with a most unenviable lust, seeking in vain to confine or cover
one of them with a hand scarce less than a shoulder of mutton. After
toying with them thus some time, as if they had been worth it, he laid
her down pretty briskly, and canting up her petticoats, made barely
a mask of them to her broad red face, that blushed with nothing but
brandy.

As he stood on one side, unbuttoning his waistcoat and breeches, her fat
brawny thighs hung down, and the whole greasy landscape lay fairly open
to my view; a wide open mouthed gap, overshaded with a grizzly bush,
seemed held out like a beggar's wallet for its provision.

But I soon had my eyes called off by a more striking object that
entirely engrossed them.

Her sturdy stallion had now unbuttoned, and produced naked, stiff and
erect, that wonderful machine, which I had never seen before, and which,
for the interest my own seat of pleasure began to take furiously in it,
I stared at with all the eyes I had: however, my senses were too much
flurried, too much concentered in that now burning spot of mine,
to observe anything more than in general the make and turn of that
instrument; from which the instinct of nature, yet more than all I had
heard of it, now strongly informed me, I was to expect that supreme
pleasure which she had placed in the meeting of those parts so admirably
fitted for each other.

Long, however, the young spark did not remain before giving it two or
three shakes, by way of brandishing it, he threw himself upon her, and
his back being now towards me, I could only take his being ingulphed for
granted, by the directions he moved in, and the impossibility of missing
so staring a mark; and now the bed shook, the curtains rattled so that
I could scarce hear the sighs and murmurs, the heaves and pantings that
accompanied the action, from the beginning to the end; the sound and
sight of which thrilled to the very soul of me, and made every vein of
my body circulate liquid fires: the emotion grew so viol-lent that it
almost intercepted my respiration.

Prepared then, and disposed as I was by the discourse of my companions,
and Phoebe's minute detail of everything, no wonder that such a sight
gave the last dying blow to my native innocence.

Whilst they were in the heat of the action, guided by nature only, I
stole my hand up my petticoats, and with fingers on fire, seized and yet
more inflamed that center of all my senses: my heart palpitated, as if
it would force its way through my bosom: I breathed with pain; I twisted
my thighs, squeezed and compressed the lips of that virgin slit, and
following mechanically the example of Phoebe's manual operation on
it, as far as I could find admission, brought on at last the critical
ecstasy, the melting flow, into which nature, spent with excess of
pleasure, dissolves and dies away.

After which, my senses recovered coolness enough to observe the rest of
the transaction between this happy pair.

The young fellow had just dismounted, when the old lady immediately
sprung up, with all the vigour of youth, derived, no doubt, from her
late refreshment; and making him sit down, began in her turn to kiss
him, to pat and pinch his cheeks, and play with his hair: all which he
received with an air of indifference and coolness that showed him to be
much altered from what he was when he first went on to the breach.

My pious governess, however, not being above calling in auxiliaries,
unlocks a little case of cordials that stood near the bed, and made him
pledge her in a very plentiful dram: after which, and a little amorous
parley, Madam set herself down upon the same place, at the bed's foot;
and the young fellow standing sidewise by her, she, with the greatest
effrontery imaginable, unbuttons his breeches, and removing his shirt,
draws out his affair, so shrunk and diminished, that I could not but
remember the difference, now crest-fallen, or just faintly lifting
its head: but our experience matron very soon, by chaffing it with her
hands, brought it to swell to that size and erection I had before seen
it up to.

I admired then, upon a fresh account, and with a nicer survey, the
texture of that capital part of man: the flaming red head as it stood
uncapt, the whiteness of the shaft, and the shrub growth of curling hair
that embrowned the foots of it, the roundish bag that dangled down from
it, all exacted my eager attention, and renewed my flame. But, as the
main affair was now at the point the industrious dame had laboured to
bring it to, she was not in the humour to put off the payment of her
pains, but laying herself down, drew him gently upon her, and thus they
finished, in the same manner as before, the old last act.

This over, they both went out lovingly together, the old lady having
first made him a present, as near as I could observe, of three or four
pieces; he being not only her particular favourite on account of his
performances, but a retainer to the house; from whose sight she had
taken great care hitherto to secret me, lest he might not have had
patience to wait for my lord's arrival, but have insisted on being his
taster, which the old lady was under too much subjection to him to dare
dispute with him; for every girl of the house fell to him in course,
and the old lady only now and then got her turn, in consideration of the
maintenance he had, and which he could scarce be accused of not earning
from her.

As soon as I heard them go down-stairs, I stole up softly to my own
room, out of which I had luckily not been missed; there I began to
breathe more free, and to give a loose to those warm emotions which the
sight of such an encounter had raised in me, I laid me down on the bed,
stretched myself out, joining and ardently wishing, and requiring any
means to divert or allay the rekindled rage and tumult of my desires,
which all pointed strongly to their pole: man. I felt about the bed as
if I sought for something that I grasped in my waking dream, and not
finding it, could have cried for vexation; every part of me plowing with
simulated fires. At length, I resorted to the only present remedy, that
of vain attempts at digitation, where the small-ness of the theatre did
not yet afford room enough for action, and where the pain my fingers
gave me, in striving for admission, though they procured me a slight
satisfaction for the present, started an apprehension which I could not
be easy till I had communicated to Phoebe and received her explanations
upon it.

The opportunity, however, did not offer till next morning, for Phoebe
did not come to bed till long after I was gone to sleep. As soon then as
we were both awake, it was but in course to bring our ly-a-bed chat to
hand, on the subject of my uneasiness: to which a recital of the love
scene I had thus, by chance, been spectatress of, served for a preface.

Phoebe could not hear it to the end without more than one interruption
by peals of laughter, and my ingenuous way of relating matters did not a
little heighten the joke to her.

But, on her sounding me how the sight had affected me, without mincing
or hiding the pleasurable emotions it had inspired me with, I told
her at the same time that one remark had perplexed me, and that very
considerably. "Aye!" says she, "what was that?" "Why," replied I,
"having very curiously and attentively compared the size of that
enormous machine, which did not appear, at least to my fearful
imagination, less than my wrist, and at least three of my hand-fuls
long, to that of the tender small part of me which was framed to receive
it, I could not conceive its being possible to afford it entrance
without dying, perhaps in the greatest pain, since she well knew
that even a finger thrust in there hurt me beyond bearing. As to my
mistress's and yours, I can very plainly distinguish the different
dimensions of them from mine, palpable to the touch, and visible to
the eye; so that, in short, great as the promised pleasure may be, I am
afraid of the pain of the experiment."

Phoebe at this redoubled her laugh, and whilst I expected a very serious
solution of my doubts and apprehensions in this matter, only told me
that "she never heard of a mortal wound being given in those parts, by
that terrible weapon, and that some she knew younger, and as delicately
made as myself, had outlived the operation; that she believed, at the
worst, I should take a great deal of liking; that true it was, there was
a great diversity of sizes in those parts, owing to nature, child-bearing,
frequent over-stretching with unmerciful machines, but that at a certain
age and habit of body, even the most experienced in those affairs could
not well distinguish between the maid and the woman, supposing too an
absence of all artifice, in their natural situation: but that since
chance had thrown in my way one sight of that sort, she would procure me
another, that should feast my eyes more delicately, and go a great way
in the cure of my fears from that imaginary disproportion".

On this she asked me if I knew Polly Phillips? "Undoubterly," says I,
"the fair girl which was so tender of me when I was sick, and has been,
as you told me, but two months in the house." "The same," says Phoebe.
"You must know then, she is kept by a young Genoes merchant, whom his
uncle, who is immensely rich, and whose darling he is, on a pretex of
settling some accounts, but in reality to humour his inclinations for
travelling, and seeing the world. He met casually with this Polly once
in company, and taking a likning to her, makes it worth her while to
keep entirely to him. He comes to her here twice or thrice a week, and
she receives him in the light closet up one pair of stairs, where he
enjoys her in a taste, I suppose, peculiar to the heat, or perhaps the
caprices of his own country, I say no more, but to-morrow being his day,
you shall see what passes between them, from a place only known to your
mistress and myself."

You may be sure, in the ply I was now taking, I had no objection to the
proposal, and was rather a tip-toe for its accomplishments.

At five in the evening next day, Phoebe, punctual to her promise, came
to me as I sat alone in my own room, and beckoned me to follow her.

We went down the back stairs very softly, and opening the door of a
dark closet, where there was some old furniture kept, and some cases of
liquor, she drew me in after her, and fastened the door upon us, we had
no light but what came through a long crevice in the partition between
ours and the light closet, where the scene of action lay; so that
sitting on those low cases, we could, with the greatest ease, as well as
clearness, see all objects (ourselves unseen), only by applying our
eyes close to the crevice, where the moulding of a panel had warped, or
started a little on the other side.

The young gentleman was the first person I saw, with his back directly
towards me, looking at a print. Polly was not yet come: in less than a
minute though, the door opened, and she came in; and at the noise the
door made he turned about, and come to meet her, with an air of the
greatest tenderness and satisfaction.

After saluting her, he led her to a coach that fronted us, where they
both sat down, and the young Genoes helped her to a glass of wine, with
some Naples biscuits on a salver.

Presently, when they had exchanged a few kisses, and questions in broken
English on one side, he began to unbutton, and, in fine, stript unto his
shirt.

As if this had been the signal agreed on for pulling off all their
clothes, a scheme which the heat of the season perfectly favoured, Polly
began to draw her pins, and as she had no stays to unlace, she was in a
trice, with her gallant's officious assistance, undressed to all but her
shift.

When he saw this, his breeches were immediately loosened, waist and
knee bands, and slipped over his ankles, clean off; his shirt collar was
unbottoned too: then, first giving Polly an encouraging kiss, he stole,
as it were, the shift off the girl, who being, I suppose, broke and
familiarized to this humour, blushed indeed, but less than I did at the
apparition of her, now standing stark naked, just as she came ont of
the hands of pure nature, with her black hair loose and a-float down her
dazzling white neck and shoulders, whilst the deepened carnation of her
cheeks went off gradually into the hue of glazed snow: for such were the
blended tints polish of her skin.

This girl could not be above eighteen: her face regular and sweet
featured, her shape exquisite; nor could I help envying her two ripe
enchanting breasts, finely plumped out in flesh, but withal so round, so
firm, that they sustained themselves, in scorn of any stay: then their
nipples, pointing different ways, marked their pleasing separation;
beneath them lay the delicious tract of the belly, which terminated in
a parting of rift scarce discerning, that modesty seemed to retire
downward, and seek shelter between two plump fleshy thighs: the curling
hair that overspread its delightful front, clothed it with the richest
sable fur in the universe: in short, she was evidently a subject for the
painters to court her, sitting to them for a pattern female beauty, in
all the true pride and pomp of nakedness.

The young Italian (still in his shirt) stood gazing and transported at
the sight of beauties that might have fired a dying hermit; his eager
eyes devoured her, as she shifted attitudes at his discretion: neither
were his hands excluded their share of the high feast, but wandered, on
the hunt of pleasure, over every part and inch of her body, so qualified
to afford the most exquisite sense of it.

In the mean time time, one could not help observing the swell of his
shirt before, that bolstered out, and pointed out the condition of
things behind the curtain: but he soon removed it, by slipping his shirt
over his head; and now, as to nakedness, they had nothing to reproach
one another.

The young gentleman, by Phoebe's guess, was about two and twenty; tall
and well limbed. His body was finely formed, and of a most vigorous
make, square shouldered, and broad chested: his face was not remarkable
any way, but for a nose inclining to the Roman, eyes large, black, and
sparkling, and a ruddiness in his cheeks that was the more a grace; for
his complexion was of the brownest, not of that dusky dun colour which
excludes, the idea of freshness, but of that clear, olive gloss, which
glowing with life, dazzles perhaps less than fairness, and yet pleases
more, when it pleases at all. His hair being too short to tie fell no
lower than his neck, in short easy curls; and he had a few sprigs about
his paps, that garnished his chest in a style of strength and manliness.
Then his grand movement, which seemed to rise out of a thicket of
curling hair, that spread from the root all over his thighs and belly up
to the navel, stood stiff and upright, but of a size to frighten me, by
sympathy for the small tender part which was the object of its fury,
and which now lay exposed to my fairest view; for he had, immediately
on stoppings off his shirt, gently pushed her down on the couch, which
stood conveniently to break her willing fall. Her thighs were spread out
to their utmost extention, and discovered between them the mark of the
sex, the red-centered cleft of flesh, whose lips vermillioning inwards,
expressed a small ruby line in sweet miniature, such as Guide's touch or
colouring: could never attain to the life or delicacy of.

Phoebe, at this, gave me a gentle jog, to prepare me for a whisper
question: "Whether I thought my little maiden-head was much less?" But
my attention was too much engrossed, too much inwrapped with all I saw,
to be able to give her any answer.

By this time the young gentelman had changed her posture from lying
breadth to length-wise on the coach: but her thighs were still spread,
and the mark lay fair for him, who now kneeling between them, displayed
to us a side view of that fierce erect machine of his, which threatened
no less than splitting the tender victim, who lay smiling at the
uplifted stroke, nor seemed to decline it. He looked upon his weapon
himself with some pleasure, and guiding it with his hand to the
inviting; slit, drew aside the lips, and lodged it (after some thrusts,
which Polly seemed even to assist) about half way; but there it stuck, I
suppose from its growing thickness: he draws it again, and just wetting
it with spittle, re-enters, and with ease sheathed it now up to the
hilt, at which Polly gave a deep sigh, which was quite another tone than
one of pain; he thrusts, she heaves, at first gently, and in a regular
cadence; but presently the transport began to be too violent to observe
any order or measure; their motions were too rapid, their kisses too
fierce' and fervent for nature to support such fury long: both seemed to
me out of themselves: their eyes darted fires: "Oh! oh! I can't bear it.
It is too much. I die. I am going," were Polly's expressions of extasy:
his joys were more silent: but soon broken murmurs, sighs heart-fetched,
and at length a dispatching thrust, as if he would have forced himself
up her body, and then the motionless languor of all his limbs, all
shewed that the die-away moment was come upon him; which she gave signs
of joining with by, the wild throwing of her hands about, closing her
eyes, and giving a deep sob, in which she seemed to expire in an agony
of bliss.

When he had finished his stroke, and got from off her, she lay still
without the least motion, breathless, as it should seem, with pleasure.
He replaced her again breadth-wise on the couch, unable to sit up, with
her thighs open, between which I could observe a kind of white liquid,
like froth, hanging about the outward lips of that recently opened
wound, which now glowed with a deeper red. Presently she gets up, and
throwing her arms round him, seemed far undelighted with the trial he
had put her to, to judge, at least by the fondness with which she eyed,
and hung upon him.

For my part, I will not pretend to describe what I felt over me during
this scene; but from that instant, adieu all fears of what man can
do unto me! they were now changed into such ardent desires, such
ungovernable longings, that I could have by the sleeve, and offered him
the bauble, which I now imagined the loss of would be a gain I could not
too soon procure myself.

Phoebe, who had more experience, and to whom such sights were not so
new, could not however, be unmoved at so warm a scene; and drawing me
away softly from the peeping hole, for fear of being overheard, guided
me as the door as possible, all passive and obedient to her least
signals.

Here was no room either to sit or lie, but making me stand with my back
towards the door, she lifted up my petticoats, and with her busy fingers
fell to visit and explore that part of me, where I was perfectly sick
and ready to die with desire; that the bare touch of her finger, in
that critical place, had the effect of a fire to a train, and her hand
instantly made her sensible to what a pitch I was wound up, and melted
by the sight she had thus procured me. Satisfied then with her success,
in allaying a heat that would have made me impatient of seeing the
continuation of the transactions between our amourous couple, she
brought me again to the crevice, so favourable to our curiosity.

We had certainly been but a few instants away from it, and yet on our
return we saw everything in good forwardness for recommencing the tender
hostilities.

The young foreigner was sitting down, fronting us, on the coach, with
Polly upon one knee, who had her arms round his neck, whilst the extreme
whiteness of her skin was not undelightfully contrasted by the smooth
glossy brown of her lover's.

But who could count the fierce, unnumbered kisses given and taken?
In which I could often discover their mouths were double tongued,
and seemed to favour the mutual insertion with the greatest gust and
delight.

In the meantime, his red-headed champion, that had so lately fled the
pit, quelled and abashed, was now recovered to the top of his condition,
perked and crested up between Polly's thighs, who was not wanting, on
her part, to coax and keep it in good humour, stroking it, with her
head down, and receiving even its velvet tip between the lips of not
its proper mouth: whether it was to render it more glib and easy of
entrance, I could not tell; but it had such an effect, that the young
gentleman seemed by his eyes, that sparkled with more excited lustre,
and his inflamed countenance, to receive increase of pleasure. He got
up, and taking Polly in his arms, embraced her, and said something too
softly for me to hear, leading her withal to the foot of the couch, and
taking delight to slap her thighs and posteriors with that stiff sinew
of his, which hit them with a spring that he gave it with his hand, and
made them resound again, but her about as much as he meant to hurt her,
for she seemed to have as frolic a taste as himself.

But guess my surprise, when I saw the lazy young rogue lie down on his
back, and gently pull down Polly upon him, who giving way to his humour,
stradled, and with her hands conducted her blind favourite to the right
place; and following her impulse, ran directly upon the flaming point of
this weapon of pleasure, which she staked herself upon, up pierced, and
infixed to the extremest hair breadth of it: thus she sat on him a few
instants, enjoying and relishing her situation, whilst he toyed with
her provoking breasts. Sometimes she would stoop to meet his kiss: but
presently the sting of pleasure spurred them up to fiercer action; then
began the storm of heaves, which, from the undermost combatant, were
thrust at the same time, he crossing his hands over her, and drawing
her home to him with a sweet violence: the inverted strokes of anvil
over hammer soon brought on the critical period, in which all the signs
of a close conspiring extasy informed us of the point they were at.

For me, I could bear to see no more; I was so overcome, so inflamed at
the second part of the same play, that, mad to an intolerable degree,
I hugged, I clasped Phoebe, as if she had wherewithal to relieve me.
Pleased however with, and pitying the taking she could feel me in, she
drew towards the door, and opening it softly as she could, we both got
off undiscovered, and reconducted me to my own room, where, unable to
keep my legs, in the agitation I was in, I instantly threw myself down
on the bed, where I lay transported, though ashamed at what I felt.

Phoebe lay down by me, and asked me archly, "if, now that I had seen
the enemy, and fully considered him, I was still afraid of him? or did
I think I could come to a close engagement with him?" To all which, not a
word on my side; I sighed, and could scarcely breathe. She takes hold
of my hand, and having rolled up her own petticoats, forced it half
strivingly, towards those parts, where, now grown more knowing, I missed
the main object of my wishes; and finding not even the shadow of what I
wanted, where every thing was so fiat, or so hollow, in the vexation
I was in at it. I should have withdrawn my hand, but for fear of
disobliging her. Abandoning it then entirely to her management, she made
use of it as she thought proper, to procure herself rather the shadow
than the substance of any pleasure. For my part, I now pined for more
solid food, and promised tacitly to myself that I would not be put off
much longer with this foolery of woman to woman, of Mrs. Brown did not
soon provide me with the essential specific. In short, I had all the air
of not being able to wait the arrival of my lord B----, though he was
now expected in a very fews days: nor did I wait for him, for love
itself took charge of the disposal of me, in spite of interest, or gross
lust.

It was now two days after the closet scene, that I got up about six in
the morning, and leaving my bedfellow fast asleep, stole down, with no
other thought than of taking a little fresh air in a small garden, which
our back parlour opened into, and from which my confinement debarred me,
at the times company came to my house; but now sleep and silence reigned
all over it.

I opened the parlour door, and well surprised was I at seeing, by the
side of a fire half-out, a young gentleman in the old lady's elbow
chair, with his legs laid upon another, fast asleep, and left there by
his thoughtless companions, who had drank him down, and then went off
with every one but his mistress, whilst he stayed behind by the courtesy
of the old matron, who would not disturb or turn him out in that
condition at one in the morning; and beds, it is more than probable
there were none to spare. On the table still remained the punch bowl and
glasses, stewed about in their usual disorder after a drunken revel.

But when I drew nearer, to view the sleeping estray, heavens! what
a sight! No! term of years, no turn of fortune could ever eraze the
lightninglike impression his form made on me. Yes! dearest object of
my earliest passion, I command for ever the remembrance of thy first
appearance to my ravished eyes, it calls thee up, present; and I see
thee now.

Figure to yourself, Madam, fair stripling between eighteen and nineteen,
with his head reclined on one of the sides of the chair, his hair
disordered curls, irregularly shading a face, on which all the roseate
bloom of youth and all the manly graces conspired to fix my eye
sand heart; even the languour and paleness of his face, in which the
momentary triumph of the lily over the rose was owing to the excesses
of the night, gave an inexpressible sweetness to the finest features
imaginable: his eyes, closed in sleep, displayed the meeting edges of
their lids beautifully bordered with long eye-lashes; over which no
pencil could have described two more regular arches than those that
graced his forehead, which was high, perfectly white and smooth; then a
pair of vermilion lips, pouting and swelling to the touch, as if a bee
had freshly stung them, seemed to challenge me to get the gloves off
this lovely sleeper, had not the modesty and respect, which in both
sexes are inseparable from a true passion, checked my impulses.

But on seeing his shirt collar unbottoned, and bosom whiter than a drift
of snow, the pleasure of considering it could not bribe me to lengthen
it, at the hazard of a health that began to be my life's concern. Love,
that made me timid, taught me to be tender too: with a trembling hand
I took hold of one of his, and waking him as gently as possible, he
started, and looking, at first a little wildly, said with a voice that
sent its harmonious sound to my heart: "Pray, child, what-a-clock is
it?" I told him, and added that he might catch cold if he slept longer
with his breast open in the cool of the morning air. On this he thanked
me with a sweetness perfectly agreeing with that of his features and
eyes; the last now broad open, and eagerly surveying me, carried the
surightly fires they sparkled with directly to my heart.

It seems, that having drank too freely before he came upon the rake with
some of his young companions, he had put himself out of a condition to
go through all the weapons with them, and crown the night with a getting
a mistress; so that seeing me in a loose undress, he did not doubt but I
was one of the misses of the house, sent in to repair his loss of time;
but though he seized that notion, and a very obvious one it was, without
hesitation, yet, whether my figure made a more than ordinary impression
on him, or whether it was his natural politeness, he addressed me in
a manner far from rude, though still on the foot of one of the house
pliers come to amuse him; and giving me the first kiss that I ever
relished from man in my life, asked me if I could favour him with my
company, assuring me that he would make it worth my while: but had
not even new-born love, that true refiner of lust, opposed so sudden a
surrender, the fear of being surprised by the house was a sufficient bar
to my compliance.

I told him then, in a tone set by love itself, that for reasons I had
not time to explain to him. I could not stay with him, and might even
ever see him again, with a sigh at these words, which broke from the
bottom of my heart. My conqueror, who, as he afterwards told me, had
been struck with my appearance, and liked me as much as he could think
of liking any one in my supposed way of life, asked me briskly at once,
if I would be kept by him, and that he would take a lodging for me
directly, and relieve me from any engagements he presumed I might be
under to the house.

Rash, sudden, undigested, even dangerous as this offer might be from a
perfect stranger, and that stranger a giddy boy, the prodigious love
I was struck with for him, had put a charm into every objection: I not
resisting, and blinded me to every objection; I could, at that instant,
have died for him: think if I could resist an invitation to live with
him! Thus my heart, beating strong to the proposal, dictated my answer,
after scarce a minute's pause, that I would accept of his offer, and
make my escape to him in what way he pleased, and that I would be
entirely at his disposal, let it be good or bad. I have often since
wondered that so great an easiness did not disgust him, or make me too
cheap in his eyes, but my fate had so appointed it, that in his fears of
the hazzard of the town, he had been some time looking out for a girl to
take into keeping, and my person happening to hit his fancy, it was by
one of those miracles reserved to love, that we struck the bargain in
the instant, which we sealed by an exchange of kisses, that the hopes of
a more uninterrupted enjoyment engaged him to content himself with.

Never, however, did dear youth carry in his head more wherewith
to justify the turning of a girl's head, and making her set all
consequences at defiance, for the sake of following a gallant.

For, besides all the perfections of manly beauty which were assembled in
his form, he had an air of neatness and gentility, certain smartness in
the carriage and port of his head, that yet more distinguished him; his
eyes were sprightly and full of meaning; his looks had in them something
at once sweet and commanding; his complexion out-bloomed the lovely
coloured rose, whilst its inimitable tender vivid glow clearly saved
it from the reproach of wanting life, of raw and dough-like, which is
commonly made of those so extremely fair as he was.

Our little plan was, that I should get out about seven the next morning
(which I could readily promise, as I knew where to get the key of the
street door) and he would wait at the end of the street with a coach
to convey me safe off; after which, we would send, and clear any debt
incurred by my stay at Mrs. Brown's, who, he only judged, in gross,
might not care to part with one, he thought, so fit to draw custom to
the house.

I then just hinted to him not to mention in the house his having seen
such a person as me, for reasons I would explain to him more at leisure.
And then, for fear of miscarrying, by being seen together, I tore myself
from him with a bleeding heart, and stole up softly to my room, where
I found Phoebe still fast asleep, and hurrying off my few clothes,
lay down by her, with a mixture of joy and anxiety, that may be easier
conceived than expressed.

The risks of Mrs. Brown's discovering my purpose, of disappointments,
misery, ruin, all vanished before this new-kindled flame. The seeing,
the touching, the being, if but for a night, with this idol of my
fond virgin heart, appeared to me a happiness above the purchase of my
liberty or life. He might use me ill, let him: he was the master, happy,
too happy, even to receive death at so dear a hand.

To this purpose were the reflections of the whole day, of which every
minute seemed to me a little eternity. How often did I visit the clock!
nay, was tempted to advance the tedious hand, as if that would have
advanced the time with it! Had those of the house had the least
observations on me, they must have remarked something extraordinary from
the discomposure I could not help betraying; especially when at dinner
mention was made of the charmingest youth having been there, and stayed
breakfast. "Oh! he was such a beauty!... I should have died for him!...
they would pull caps for him!..." and the like fooleries; which,
however, was throwing oil on a fire I was sorely put to it to smother
the blaze of.

The fluctuations of my mind, the whole day, produced one good effect:
which was, that, through mere fatigue, I slept tolerably well till five
in the morning, when I got up, and having dressed myself, waited, under
the double tortures of fear and impatience, for the appointed hour.
It came at last, the dear, critical, dangerous hour came; and now,
supported only by the courage love lent me, I ventured, a tip-toe, down
stairs, leaving my box behind, for fear of being surprized with it in
going out.

I got to the street door, the key whereof was always laid on the
chair by our bed side, in trust with Phoebe, who having not the least
suspicion of my entertaining any design to go from them (nor, indeed,
had I, but the day before), made no reserve or concealment of it from
me. I opened the door with great ease; love, that emboldened, protected
me too: and now, got safe into the street, I saw my new guardian angel
waiting at a coach door, ready open. How I got to him I know not: I
suppose I flew; but I was in the coach in a trice, and he by the side of
me, with his arms clasped round me, and giving me the kiss of welcome.
The coachman had his orders, and drove to them.

My eyes were instantly filled with tears, but tears of the most
delicious delight; to find myself in the arms of that beauteous youth,
was a rapture that my little hear swam in; past or future were equally
out of the question with me; the present was as much as all my powers
of life were sufficient to bear the transport of, without fainting. Nor
were the most tender embraces, the most soothing expressions wanting
on his side, to assure me of his love, and of never giving me cause to
repent the bold step I had taken, in throwing myself thus entirely upon
his honour and generosity. But, alas! this was no merit in me, for I was
drove to it by a passion too impetuous for me to resist, and, I did what
I did, because I could not help it.

In an instant, for time was now annihilated with me, we were landed at a
public house in Chelsea, hospitably commodious for the reception of duet
parties of pleasure, where a breakfast of chocolate was prepared for us.

An old jolly stager, who kept it, and understood life perfectly well,
breakfasted with us, and leering archly at me, gave us both joy, and
said, "we were well paired, i' faith! that a great many gentlemen and
ladies used his house, but he had never seen a handsomer couple... he
was sure I was a fresh piece... I looked so country, so innocent! well
my spouse was a lucky man!..." all which, common landlord's cant, not
only pleased and soothed me, but helped to diver my confusion at being
with my new sovereign, whom, the minute approached, I began to fear to
be alone with: a timidity which true love had a greater share in than
even maiden bashful-ness.

I wished, I doated, I could have died for him; and yet, I know not how,
or why I dreaded the point which had been the object of my fiercest
wishes; my pulses beat fears, amidst a flush of the warmest desires.
This struggle of the passions, however, this conflict betwixt modesty
and lovesick longings, made me burst again into tears; which he took, as
he had done before, only for the remains of concern and emotion at the
suddenness of my change of condition, in committing myself to his care;
and, in consequence of that idea, did and said all that he thought would
most comfort and re-inspirit me.

After breakfast, Charles (the dear familiar name I must take the liberty
henceforward to distinguish my Adonis by), with a smile full of meaning,
took me gently by the hand, and said: "Come, my dear, I will show you
a room that commands a fine prospect over some gardens"; and without
waiting for an answer, in which he relieved me extremely, he led me up
into a chamber, airy and lightsome, where all seeing of prospects was
out of the question, except that of a bed, which had all the air of
recommending the room to him.

Charles had just slipped the bolt of the door, and running, caught me in
his arms, and lifting me from the ground, with his lips glued to mine,
bore me trembling, panting, dying with soft fears and tender wishes, to
the bed; where his impatience would not suffer him to undress me, more
than just unpinning my handkerchief and gowns, and unlacing my stays.

My bosom was now bare, and rising in the warmest throbs, presented to
his sight and feeling the firm hard swell of a pair of young breast,
such as may be imagined of a girl not sixteen, fresh out of the country,
and never before handled: but even their pride, whiteness, fashion,
pleasing resistance to the touch, could not bribe his restless hands
from roving; but, giving them the loose, my petticoats and shift were
soon taken up, and their stronger center of attraction laid open to
their tender invasion. My fears, however, made me mechanically close
my thighs; but the very touch of his hand insinuated between them,
disclosed them and opened a way for the main attack.

In the mean time, I lay fairly exposed to the examination of his eyes
and hands, quiet and unresisting; which confirmed him the opinion he
proceeded so cavalierly upon, that I was no novice in these matters,
since he had taken me out of a common bawdy house, nor had I said one
thing to prepossess him of my virginity; and if I had, he would sooner
have believed that I took him for a cully that would swallow such an
improbability, than that I was still mistress of that darling treasure,
that hidden mine, so eagerly sought after by the men, and which they
never dig for, but to destroy.

Being now too high wound up to bear a delay, he unbuttoned, and drawing
out the engine of love assaults, drove it currently, as at a ready
made breach... Then! then! for the first time, did I feel that stiff
horn-hard gristle, battering against the tender part; but imagine to
yourself his surprise, when he found, after several vigorous pushes,
which hurt me extremely, that he made not the least impression.

I complained, but tenderly complained: "I could not bear it... indeed
he hurt me!..." Still he thought no more, than that being so young, the
largeness of his machine (for few men could dispute size with him) made
all the difficulty; and that possibly I had not been enjoyed by any so
advantageously made in that part as himself: for still, that my virgin
flower was yet un-cropped, never entered into his head, and he would
have thought it idling with time and words, to have questioned me upon
it.

He tried again, still no admittance, still no penetration; but he had
hurt me yet more, while my extreme love made me bear extreme pain,
almost without a groan. At length, after repeated fruitless trials, he
lay down panting by me, kissed my falling tears, and asked me tenderly
"what was the meaning of so much complaining? and if I had not borne it
better from other than I did from him?" I answered, with a simplicity
framed to persuade, that he was the first mam that ever served me so.
Truth is powerful, and it is not always that we do not believe what we
eagerly wish.

Charles, already disposed by the evidence, of his senses to think my
pretences to virginity not entirely apocryphal, smothers me with kisses,
begs me, in the-name of love, to have a little patience, and that he
wilt be as tender of hurting me as he would be of himself..

Alas! it was enough I knew his pleasure to submit joyfully to him,
whatever pain I foresaw it would cost, me.

He now resumes his attempts in more form: first, he put one of the
pillows under me, to give the blank of his aim a more favourable
elevation, and another Under my head, in ease of it; then spreading my
thighs, and placing himself standing betwen them, made them rest upon
his; applying then the point of his machine to the slit, into which he
sought entrance, it was so small, he could scarce assure himself of its
being rightly pointed. He looks, he feels, and satisfies himself:
there driving on with fury, its prodigious stiffness, thus impacted,
wedgelike, breaks the union of those parts, and gained him just the
insertion of the tip of it, lip deep; which being sensible of, he
improved his advantage, and following well his stroke, in a straight
line, forcibly deepens his penetration; but put me to such intolerable
pain, from the separation of the sides of that soft passage by a hard
thick body, I could have screamed out; but, as I was unwilling to alarm
the house, I held in my breath, and crammed my petticoat, which was;
turned up over my face, into my mouth, and bit it through in the agony.
At length, the tender texture of that tract giving way to such fierce
tearing and rending, he pierced something further into me: and now,
outrageous and no longer his own master, but borne headlong away by the
fury and over-mettle of that member, now exerting itself with a kind
of native rage, he breaks in, carries all before him, and one violent
merciless lunge, sent it, imbrued, and reeking with virgin blood, up
to the very hilt in me... Then! then all my resolution deserted me: I
screamed out, and fainted away with the sharpness of the pain; and, as
he told me afterwards, on his drawing out, when emission was over with
him, my thighs were instantly all in a stream of blood, that flowed from
the wounded torn passage.

When I recovered my senses, I found myself undressed and a-bed, in the
arms of the sweet relenting murderer of my virginity, who hung mourning
tenderly over me, and holding in his hand a cordial, which, coming from
the still dear author of so much pain, I could not refuse; my eyes,
however, moistened with tears, and languishingly turned upon him, seemed
to reproach him with his cruelty, and ask him, if such were the rewards
of love. But Charles, to whom I was now infinitely endeared by his
complete triumph over a maidenhead, where he so little expected to find
one, in tenderness to that pain which he had put me to, in procuring
himself the height of pleasure, smothered his exultation, and employed
himself with so much sweetness, so much warmth, to sooth, to caress, and
comfort me in my soft complainings, which breathed, indeed, more love
than resentment, that I presently drowned all sense of pain in the
pleasure of seeing him, of thinking that I belonged to him: he who was
now the absolute disposer of my happiness, and, in one word, my fate.

The sore was, however, too tender, the wound too bleeding fresh, for
Charles's good-nature to put my patience presently to another trial; but
as I could not stir, or walk a-cross the room, he ordered the dinner
to be brought to the bed side, where it could not be otherwise than my
getting down the wing of a fowl, and two or three glasses of wine, since
it was my adored youth who both served, and urged them on me, with that
sweet irresistible authority with which love had invested him over me.

After dinner, and everything but the wine was taken away, Charles very
impudently asks a leave, he might read the grant of in my eyes, to come
to bed to me, and accordingly falls to undressing; which I could not see
the progress of without strange emotions of fear and pleasure.

He is now in bed with me the first time, and in broad day; but when
thrusting up his own shirt and my shift, he laid his naked glowing body
to mine... oh insupportable delight! oh! superhuman rapture! what pain
could stand before a pleasure so transporting? I felt no more the smart
of my wounds below; but, curling round him like the tendril of a vine,
as if I feared any part of him should be untouched or unpressed by me, I
returned his strenuous embraces and kisses with a fervour and gust only
known to true love, and which mere lust never rise to.

Yes, even at this time, that all the tyranny of the passions is fully
over, and that my veins roll no longer but a cold tranquil stream, the
remembrance of those passages that most affected me in my youth, still
cheers and refreshes me; let me proceed then. My beauteous youth was now
glued to me in all the folds and twists that we could make our bodies
meet in; when, no longer able to rein in the fierceness of refreshed
desires, he gives his steed the head, and gently insinuating his thighs
between mine, stopping my mouth with kisses of humid fire, makes a fresh
eruption, and renewing his thrusts, pierces, tears, and forces his way
up the torn tender folds, that yielded him admission with a smart little
less severe that when the breach was first made I stifled, however, my
cries, and bore him with the passive fortitude of an heroine; soon his
thrusts, more and more furious, cheeks flushed with a deeper scarlet,
his eyes turned up in the fervent fit, some dying sighs, and an
agonizing shudder, announced the approaches of that extatic pleasure, I
was yet in too much pain to come in for my share of.

Nor was it till after a few enjoyments had numbed and blunted the
sense of the smart, and given me to feel the titillating inspersion of
balsamic sweets, drew from me the delicious return, and brought down all
my passion, that I arrived at excess of pleasure through excess of pain.
But, when successive engagements had broke and inured me, I began to
enter into the true unalloyed relish of that pleasure of pleasures, when
the warm gush darts through all the ravished inwards; what floods of
bliss! what melting transports! what agonies of delight! too fierce,
too mighty for nature to sustain?... well has she therefore, no doubt
provided the relief of a delicious momentary dissolution, the approaches
of which are intimated by a dear delirium, a sweet thrill, on the point
of emitting those liquid sweets, in which enjoyment itself is drowned,
when one gives the languishing stretch out, and die at the discharge.

How often, when the rage and tumult of my senses had subsided, after
the melting flow, have I, in a tender meditation, asked myself cooly the
question, if it was in nature for any of its creatures to be so happy as
I was? Or, what were all fears of the consequence, put in the scale of
one night's enjoyment, of any thing so transcendently the taste of my
eyes and heart, as that delicious, fond, matchless youth.

Thus we spent the whole afternoon, till supper time in a continued
circle of love delights, kissing, turtle-billing, toying, and all the
rest of the feast. At length, supper was served in, before which Charles
had, for I do not know what reason, slipped his clothes on; and sitting
down by the bed side, we made table and tablecloth of the bed and
sheets, whilst he suffered nobody to attend or serve but himself. He
ate with a very good appetite, and seemed charmed to see me eat. For
my part, I was so transported with the comparison of the delights I
now swam in, with the insipidity of all my past scenes of life, that I
thought them sufficiently cheap, at even the price of my ruin, or the
risk of their not lasting. The present possession was all my little head
could find room for.

We lay together that night, when, after playing repeated prizes of
pleasure, nature, overspent and satisfied, gave us up to the arms of
sleep: those of my dear youth encircled me, the consciousness of which
made even that sleep more delicious.

Late in the morning I waked, first; and observing my lover slept
profoundly, softly disengaged myself from his arms, scarcely daring to
breathe, for fear of shortening his repose; my cap, my hair, my shift,
were all in disorder, from the rufflings I had undergone; and I took
this opportunity to adjust and set them as well as I could: whilst,
every now and then, looking at the sleeping youth, with inconceivable
fondness and delight, and reflecting on all the pain he had put me to,
tacitly owned that the pleasure had overpaid me for my sufferings.

It was then broad day. I was sitting up in the bed, the clothes of
which were all tossed, or rolled off, by the unquietness of our motions,
from the sultry heat of the weather; nor could I refuse myself a
pleasure that solicited me so irresistibly, as this fair occasion of
feasting my sight with all those treasures of youthful beauty I had
enjoyed, and which lay now almost entirely naked, his shirt being
trussed up in a perfect wisp, which the warmth of the season and room
made me easy about the consequence of. I hung over him enamoured indeed!
and devoured all his naked charms with only two eyes, when I could have
wished them at least an hundred for the fuller enjoyment of the gaze.

Oh! could I paint his figure as I see it now, still present to my
transported imagination! a whole length of an all perfect manly beauty
in full view. Think of a face without a fault, glowing with all the
opening bloom and verdant freshness of an age, in which beauty is of
either sex, and which the first down over his upper lip scarce began to
distinguish.

The parting of the double ruby pout of his lips seemed to exhale an air
sweeter and purer than what it drew in: ah! what violence did it not
cost me to refrain the so tempted kiss!

Then a neck exquisitely turned, graved behind and on the sides with fais
hair, playing freely in natural ringlets, connected his head to a body
of the most perfect form, and of the most vigorous contexture, in which
all the strength of manhood was concealed, and softened to appearance
by the delicacy of his complexion, the smoothness of his skin, and the
plumpness of his flesh.

The platform of his snow white bosom, that was laid out in a manly
proportion, presented, on the vermilion summit of each pap, the idea of
a rose about to blow.

Nor did his shirt hinder me from observing the symmetry of his limbs,
that exactness of shape, in the fall of it towards the loins, where the
waist ends and the rounding swell of the hips commences; where the skin,
sleek, smooth, and dazzling white, burnishes on; the stretch-over firm,
plump, ripe flesh, that crimped' and ran into dimples at the least
pressure, or that the touch could not rest upon, but slid over on the
surface of the most polished ivory.

His thighs, finely fashioned, and with a florid glossy roundness,
gradually tapering away to the knees, seemed pillars worthy to support
that beauteous frame at the bottom of which I could not, without
some remains of terror, some tender emotions too, fix my eyes on that
terrible machine, which had, not long before, with such fury broke into,
torn, and almost ruined those soft, tender parts of mine, that had not
yet done smarting with the effects of its rage; but behold it now! crest
fallen, reclining its half-caped vermilion head over one of his thighs,
quiet, pliant, and to all appearances incapable of the mischiefs and
cruelty it had committed. Then the beautiful growth of the hair, in
short and soft curls round its roots, its whiteness, branched veins, the
supple softness of the shaft, as it lay foreshortened, rolled and
shrunk up into a squat thickness, languid, and borne up from between
his thighs, by its globular appendage, that wondrous treasure bag
of nature's sweets, which revelled round, and pursed up in the
only wrinkles that are known to please, perfected the prospect, and
altogether formed the most interesting moving picture in nature, and
surely infinitely superior to those nudities furnished by the painters,
statuaries, or any art, which are purchased at immense prices; whilst
the sight of them in actual life is scarce sovereignly tasted by any
but the few whom nature has endowed with a fire of imagination, warmly
pointed by a truth of judgment to the spring-head, the originals of
beauty, of nature's unequalled composition, above all the imitations of
art, or the reach of wealth to pay their price.

But every thing must have an end. A motion made by this angelic youth,
in the listlessness of goingoff sleep, replaced his shirt and the bed
clothes in a posture that shut up that treasury from longer view.

I lay down then, and carrying my hands to that part of me in which the
objects just seen had begun to raise a mutiny, that prevailed over the
smart of them, my fingers now opened themselves an easy passage; but
long I had not time to consider the wide difference there, between
the maid and the now finished woman, before Charles waked, and turning
towards me, kindly enquired how I had rested? and, scarce giving me time
to answer, imprinted on my lips one of his burning rapture kisses, which
darted a flame to my heart, that from thence radiated to every part of
me; and presently, as if he had proudly meant revenge for the survey I
had smuggled of all his naked beauties, he spurns off the bed clothes,
and trussing up my shift as high as it would go, took his turn to feast
his eyes on all the gifts nature had bestowed on my person; his busy
hands, too, ranged intemperately over every part of me. The delicious
austerity and hardness of my yet unripe budding breasts, the whiteness
and firmness of my flesh, the freshness and regularity of my features,
the harmony of my limbs, all seemed to confirm him in his satisfaction
with his bargain; but when curious to explore the havock he had made
in the centre of his over fierce attack, he not only directed his hands
there, but with a pillow put under, placed me favourably for his
wanton purpose of inspection. Then, who can express the fire his eyes
glistened, his hands glowed with! whilst sighs of pleasure, and tender
broken exclamations, were all the praises he could utter. By this time
his machine, stiffly risen at me, gave me to see it in its highest state
and bravery. He feels it himself, seems pleased at its condition, and,
smiling loves and graces, seizes one of my hands, and carries it, with
gentle compulsion, to this pride of nature, and its richest master
piece.

I, struggling faintly, could not help feeling what I could not grasp, a
column of the whitest ivory, beautifully streaked with blue veins, and
carrying, fully un-capt, a head of the liveliest vermilion: no horn
could be harder or stiffer; yet no velvet more smooth or delicious to
the touch. Presently he guided my hand lower, to that part in which
nature, and pleasure keep their stores in concert, so aptly fastened
and hung on to the root of their first instrument and minister, that not
improperly he might be styled their purse-bearer too: there he made
me feel distinctly, through their soft cover, the contents, a pair of
roundish balls, that seemed to play within, and elude all pressure, but
the tenderest, from without.

But now this visit of my soft, warm hand, in those so sensible parts,
had put every thing into such ungovernable fury, disdaining all further
preluding, and taking advantage of my commodious posture, he made the
storm fall where I scarce patiently expected, and where he was sure
to lay it: presently, then, I felt the stiff intersection betwen the
yielding, divided lips of the wound, now open for life; where the
narrowness no longer put me to intolerable pain, and afforded my lover
no more difficulty than what heightened his pleasure, in the strict
embrace of that tender, warm sheath, round the instrument it was so
delicately adjusted to, and which now cased home, so gorged me with
pleasure, that it perfectly suffocated me and took away my breath; then
the killing thrusts! the unnumbered kisses! every one of which was a joy
inexpressible; and that joy lost in a crowd of yet greater blisses! But
this was a disorder too violent in nature to last long: the vessels, so
stirred and intensely heated, soon boiled over, and for that time
put out the fire; meanwhile all this dalliance and disport had so
far consumed the morning, that it became a kind of necessity to lay
breakfast and dinner into one.

In our calmer intervals Charles gave the following account of himself,
every tittle of which was true. He was the only son of a father, who,
having a small post in the revenue, rather overlived his income, and had
given this young gentleman a very slender education: no profession
had he bred him up to, but designed to provide for him in the army, by
purchasing him an ensign's commission, that is to say, provided he could
raise the money, or procure it by interest, either of which clauses was
rather to be wished than hoped for by him. On no better a plan, however,
had his improvident father suffered this youth, a youth of great
promise, to run up to the age of manhood, or near it at least, in next
to idleness; and had, besides, taken no sort of pains to give him even
the common premonitions against the vices of the town, and the dangers
of all sorts which wait the unexperienced and unwary in it. He lived at
home, and at discretion with his father, who himself kept a mistress;
and for the rest, provided Charles did not ask him for money, he was
indolently kind to him: he might lie out when he pleased, any excuse
would serve, and even his reprimands were so slight, that they carried
with them rather an air of connivance at the fault, than any serious
control or constraint. But, to supply his calls for money, Charles,
whose mother was dead, had, by her side, a grandmother, who doated
upon him. She had a considerable annuity to live on, and very regularly
parted with every shilling she could spare, to this darling of her's, to
the no little heart-burn of his father; who was vexed, not that she, by
this means, fed his son's extravagance, but that she preferred Charles
to himself; and we shall too soon see what a fatal turn such a mercenary
jealousy could operate on the breast of a father.

Charles was, however, by the means of his grandmother's lavish fondness,
very sufficiently enabled to keep a mistress, so easily contented as my
love made me; and my good fortune, for such I must ever call it, threw
me in his way, in the manner above related, just as he was on the
look-out for one.

As to temper, the even sweetness of it made him seem born for domestic
happiness: tender, naturally polite, and gentle-manner'd; it could never
be his fault, if ever jars, or animosities ruffled a calm he was so
qualified every way to maintain or restore. Without those great or
shining qualities that constitute a genius, or are fit to make a noise
in the world, he had all those humble ones that compose the softer
social merit: plain common sense, set off with every grace of modesty
and good nature, made him, if not admired, what is much happier:
universally beloved and esteemed. But, as nothing but the beauties
of his person had at first attracted my regard and fixed my passion,
neither was I then a judge of the internal merit, which I had afterwards
full occasion to discover, and which, perhaps, in that season of
giddiness and levity, would have touched my heart very little, had it
been lodged in a person less the delight of my eyes, and idol of my
senses. But to return to our situation.

After dinner, which we ate a-bed in most voluptuous disorder, Charles
got up, and taking a passionate leave of me for a few hours, went to
town, where concerting matters with a young sharp lawyer, they went
together to my late venerable mistress's, from whence I had, but the
day before, made my elopement, and with whom he was determined to settle
accounts, in a manner that should cut off all after reckonings from that
quarter.

Accordingly they went; but by the way, the Templar, his friend, on
thinking over Charles's information, saw reason to give their visit
another turn, and, instead of offering satisfaction, to demand it.

On being let in, the girls of the house flocked round Charles, whom they
knew, and from the earlyness of my escape, and their perfect ignorance
of his ever having so much as seen me, not having the least suspicion of
his being accessory to my flight, they were, in their way, making up to
him; and as to his companion, they took him probably for a fresh cully.
But the Templar soon checked their forwardness, by enquiring for the old
lady, with whom he said, with a grave-like countenance, that he had some
business to settle.

Madam was immediately sent for down, and the ladies being desired to
clear the room, the lawyer asked her, severely, if she did know, or had
not decoyed, under pretence of hiring as a servant, a young girl, just
come out of the country, called Frances or Fanny Hill, describing me
withal as particularly as he could from Charlie's description.

It is peculiar to vice to tremble at the enquiries of justice; and
Mrs. Brown, whose conscience was not entirely clear upon my account,
as knowing as she was of the town as hackneyed as she was in bluffing
through all the dangers of her vocation, could not help being alarmed at
the questions, especially when he went on to talk of a Justice of peace,
Newgate, the Old Bailey, indictments for keeping a disorderly house,
pillory, carting, and the whole process of that nature. She, who, it is
likely, imagined I had lodged an information against her house, looked
extremely blank, and began to make a thousand protestations and excuses.
However, to abridge, they brought away triumphantly my box of things,
which, had she not ben under an awe, she might have disputed with them;
and not only that, but a clearance and discharge of any demands on the
house, at the expense of no more than a bowl of arrack-punch, the
treat of which, together with the choice of the house conveniences,
was offered and not accepted. Charles all the time acted the chance
companion of the lawyer, who had brought him there, as he knew the
house, and appeared in no wise interested in the issue; but he had the
collateral pleasure of hearing all that I told him verified, as far as
the bawd's fears would give her leave to enter into my history, which,
if one may guess by the composition she so readily came into, were not
small.

Phoebe, my kind tutoress Phoebe, was at the time gone out, perhaps in
search of me, or their cooked-up story had not, it is probable, passed
smoothly.

This negociation had, however, taken up some time, which would have
appeared much longer to me, left as I was, in a strange house, if the
landlady, a motherly sort of a woman, to whom Charles had liberally
recommended me, had not come up and borne me company. We drank tea, and
her chat helped to pass away the time very agreeably, since he was our
theme; but as the evening deepened, and the hour set for his return was
elapsed, I could not dispel the gloom of impatience, and tender fears
which gathered upon me, and which our timid sex are apt to feel in
proportion to their love.

Long, however, I did not suffer: the sight of him over-paid me; and the
soft reproach I had prepared for him, expired before it reached my lips.

I was still a-bed, yet unable to use my legs otherwise than awkwardly,
and Charles flew to me, catches me in his arms, raised and extending
mine to meet his dear embrace, and gives me an account, interrupted by
many a sweet parenthesis of kisses, of the success of his measures.

I could not help laughing at the fright of the old woman had been put
into, which my ignorance, and indeed my want of innocence, had far from
prepared me from bespeaking. She had, it seems, apprehended that I fled
the shelter to some relation I had recollected in town, on my dislike
of their ways and proceedings towards me, and that this application came
from thence; for, as Charles had rightly judged, not one neighbour had,
at that still hour, seen the circumstance of my escape into the coach,
or, at least, noticed him; neither had any in the house, the least hint
of suspicion of my having spoken to him, much less of my having clapt
up such a sudden bargain with a perfect stranger, thus the greatest
improbability is not always what we should most mistrust.

We supped with all the gaiety of two young giddy creatures at the top of
their desires; and as I had given up to Charles the whole charge of my
future happiness, I thought of nothing beyond the exquisite pleasure of
possessing him.

He came to bed in due time; and this second night, the pain being pretty
well over, I tasted, in full draught, all the transports of perfect
enjoyment: I swam, I bathed in bliss, till both fell asleep, through the
natural consequences of satisfied desires, and appeased flames; nor did
we wake but to renewed raptures.

Thus, making the most of love, and life did we stay in this lodging
in Chelsea about ten days; in which time Charles took care to give his
excursions from home a favourable gloss, and to keep his footing
with his fond indulgent grand-mother, from whom he drew constant and
sufficient supplies for the charge I was to him, and which was very
trifling, in comparison with his former less regular course of pleasure.

Charles removed me then to a private ready furnished lodging in D....
street, St. James's, where he paid half a guinea a week for two rooms
and a closet on the second floor, which he had been some time looking
out for, and was more convenient for the frequency of his visits, than
where he had at first placed me, in a house, which I cannot say but
I left with regret, as it was infinitely endeared to me by the first
possession of my Charles, and the circumstance of losing, there, that
jewel, which can never be twice lost. The landlord, however, had no
reason to complain of any thing, but of a procedure in Charles too
liberal not to make him regret the loss of us.

Arrived at our new lodging, I remember I thought them extremely fine,
though ordinary enough, even at that price; but, had it been a dungeon
that Charles had brought me to, his presence would have made a little
Versailles.

The landlady, Mrs. Jones, waited on us to our apartment, and with great
volubility of tongue, explained to us all its conveniences: "that her
own maid should wait on us... that the best of quality had lodged at
her house... that her first floor was let to a foreign secretary of an
embassy, and his lady... that I looked like a very good natured lady..."
At the word lady, I blushed out of flattered vanity: this was strong
for a girl of my condition; for though Charles had the precaution of
dressing me in a less tawdry flaunting style than were the clothes I
escaped to him in, and of passing me for his wife, that she had secretly
married, and kept private (the old story) on account of his friends, I
dare swear this appeared extremely apocryphal to a woman who knew the
town so well as she did; but that was the least of her concern: it was
impossible to be less scruple-ridden than she was; and the advantage of
letting her rooms being her sole object, the truth itself would have far
from scandalized her, or broke her bargain.

A sketch of her picture, and personal history, will dispose you to
account for the part she is to act in my concern.

She was about forty six years old, tall, meagre, red-haired, with one
of those trivial ordinary faces you meet with every where, and go
about unheeded and un-mentioned. In her youth she had been kept by a
gentleman, who, dying, left her forty pounds a year during her life, in
consideration of a daughter he had by her: which daughter, at the age
of seventeen, she sold, for not a very considerable sum neither, to a
gentleman who was going on envoy abroad, and took his purchase with him,
where he used her with the utmost tenderness, and it is thought, was
secretly married to her: but had constantly made a point of her not
keeping up the least correspondence with a mother base enough to make a
market of her own flesh and blood. However, as she had not nature,
nor, indeed, any passion but that of money, this gave her no further
uneasiness, then, as she thereby lost a handle of squeezing pres-sents,
or other after-advantages, out of the bargain. Indifferent then, by
nature of constitution, to every other pleasure but that of increasing
the lump, by any means whatever, she commenced a kind of private
procuress, for which she was not amiss fitted, by her grave decent
appearance, and sometimes did a job in the match-making way; in short,
there was, nothing that appeared to her under the shape of gain, that
she would not have undertaken. She knew most of the ways of the town,
having not only herself been upon, but kept up constant intelligences in
promoting a harmony between the two sexes, in private pawn-broking, and
other profitable secrets. She rented the house she lived in, and made
the most of it, by letting it out in lodgings; though she was worth, at
least, near three or four thousand pounds, she would not allow herself
even the necessaries, of life, and pinned her subsistence entirely on
what she could squeeze out of her lodgers.

When she saw such a young pair come under her roof, her immediate
notions, doubtless, were how she should make the most money of us, by
every means that money might be made, and which, she rightly judged, our
situations and inexperience would soon beget her occasions of.

In this hopeful sanctuary, and under the clutches of this harpy, did
we pitch our residence. It will not be might material to you, or very
pleasant to me, to enter into a detail of all the petty cut-throat ways
and means with which she used to fleece us; all which Charles indolently
chose to bear with, rather than take the trouble of removing, the
difference of expense being scarce attended to by a young gentleman who
had no ideas of stint, or even economy, and a raw country girl who knew
nothing of the matter.

Here, however, under the wings of my sovereignly beloved, did the most
delicious hours of my life flow on; my Charles I had, and, in him,
every thing my fond heart could wish or desire. He carried me to plays,
operas, masquerades, and every diversion of the town; all which pleased
me, indeed, but pleased me infinitely the more for his being with me,
and explaining every thing to me, and enjoying perhaps, the natural
impressions of surprise and admiration, which such sights, at the first,
never fail to excite in a country girl, new to the delights of them; but
to me, they sensibly proved the power and dominion of the sole passion
of my heart over me, a passion in which soul and body were concentered,
and left me no room for any other relish of life but love.

As to the men I saw at those places, or at any other, they suffered so
much in the comparison my eyes made of them with my all-perfect Adonis,
that I had not the infidelity even of one wandering thought to reproach
myself with upon his account. He was the universe to me, and all that
was not him, was nothing to me.

My love, in fine, was so excessive, that is arrived at annihilating
every suggestion or kindling spark of jealousy; for, one idea only,
tending that way, gave me such exquisite torment, that my self-love, and
dread of worse than death, made me for ever renounce and defy it: nor
had I, indeed, occasion; for, were I to enter here on the recital of
several instances wherein Charles sacrificed to me women of much greater
importance than I dare hint (which, considering his form, was no such
wonder), I might, indeed, give you full proof of his unshaken constancy
to me; but would not you accuse me of warming up against a feast, which
my vanity ought long ago to have been satisfied with?

In our cessations from active pleasure, Charles framed himself one, in
instructing me, as far as his own lights reached, in a great many
points of life, that I was, in consequence of my no-education, perfectly
ignorant of: nor did I suffer one word to fall in vain from the mouth of
my lovely teacher: I hung on every syllable he uttered, and received,
as oracles, all he said; whilst kisses were all the interruption I could
not refuse myself the pleasure of admitting, from lips that breathed
more than Arabian sweetness, I was in a little time enabled, by the
progress I had made, to prove the deep regard I had paid to all that he
had said to me: repeating it to him almost word for word; and to shew
that I was not entirely the parrot, but that I reflected upon, that I
entered into it, I joined my own comments, and asked him questions of
explanation.

My country accent, and the rusticity of my gait, manners, and
deportment, began now sensibly to wear off: so quick was my observation,
and so efficacious my desire of growing every day worthier of his heart.

As to money, though, he brought me constantly all he received, it was
with difficulty he even got me to give it room in my bureau; and what
clothes I had, he could prevail on me to accept of on no other foot,
than that of pleasing him by the greater neatness in my dress, beyond
which I had no ambition. I could have made a pleasure of the greatest
toil, and worked my fingers to the bone, with joy, to have supported
him: guess, then, if I could harbour any idea of being burthensome to
him, and this disinterested turn in me was so unaffected, so much the
dictate of my heart, that Charles could not but feel it: and if he did
not love me as much as I did him (which was the constant and only matter
of sweet contention between us), he managed so, at least, as to give me
the satisfaction of believing it impossible for man to be more tender,
more true, more faithful than he was.

Our landlady, Mrs. Jones, came frequently up to my apartment, from
whence I never stirred on any pretext without Charles; nor was it
long before she wormed out, without much art, the secret of our having
cheated the church of a ceremony, and, in course, of the terms we lived
together upon; a circumstance which far from displeased her, considering
the designs she had upon me, and which, alas! she will have too soon,
room to carry into execution. But in the meantime, her own experience
of life let her see, that any attempt, however indirect or disguised,
to divert or break, at least presently, so strong a cement of hearts
as ours was, could only end in losing two lodgers, of whom she had made
very competent advantages, if either of us came to smoke her commission,
for a commission she had from one of her customers, either to debauch,
or get me away from my keeper at any rate.

But the barbarity of my fate soon saved her the task of disuniting us.
I had now been eleven months with this life of my life, which had passed
in one continued rapid stream of delight: but nothing so violent was
ever made to last. I was about three months gone with a child by him,
a circumstances would have added to his tenderness, had he ever left
me room to believe it could receive an addition, when the mortal, the
unexpected blow of separation fell upon us. I shall gallop post-over
the particulars, which I shudder yet to think of, and cannot; to this
instant, reconcile myself how, or by what means I could out-live it.

Two live-long days had I lingered through without hearing from him, I
who breathed, who existed but in him, and had never yet seen twenty-four
hours pass without seeing or hearing from him. The third day my
impatience was so strong, my alarms had been so severe, that I perfectly
sickened with them; and being unable to support the shock longer, I sunk
upon the bed, and ringing for Mrs. Jones, who had far from comforted
me under my anxieties, she came up, and I had scarce breath and spirit
enough to find words to beg of her, if she would save my life, to fall
upon some means of finding out, instantly, what was become of its
only prop and comfort. She pitied me in a way that rather sharpened my
affliction than suspended it, and went out upon this commission.

For she had but to go to Charles's house, who lived but an easy
distance, in one of the streets that run into Covent Garden. There she
went into a public house, and from thence sent for a mid servant, whose
name I had given her, as the properest to inform her.

The maid readily came, and as readily, when Mrs. Jones enquired of her
what had become of Mr. Charles, or whether he was gone out of town,
acquainted her with the disposal of her master's son, which, the very
day after, was no secret to the servants. Such sure measures had he
taken, for the most cruel punishment of his child for having more
interest with his grandmother than he had, though he made use of a
pretence, plausible enough, to get rid of him in this secret abrupt
manner, for fear her fondness should have interposed a bar to his
leaving England, and proceeding on a voyage he had concerted for him;
which pretext was, that it was indispensably necessary to secure a
considerable inheritance that devolved to him by the death of a rich
merchant (his own brother) at one of the factories in the South Seas, of
which he had lately received advice, together with a copy of the will.

In consequence of which resolution, to send away his son, he had,
unknown to him, made the necessary preparations for fitting him out,
struck a bargain with the captain of a ship, whose punctual execution of
his orders he had secured, by his interest with his principal owners
and patron; and, in short, concerted his measures so secretly, and
effectually, that whilst the son thought he was going down to the
river, that would take him a few hours, he was stopt on board of a ship,
debarred from writing, and more strictly watched than a State criminal.

Thus was the idol of my soul torn from me, and forced on a long voyage,
without taking leave of one friend, or receiving one line of comfort,
except a dry explanation and instructions, from his father, how to
proceed when he should arrive at his destined port, enclosing, withal,
some letters of recommendation to a factor there: all these particulars
I did not learn minutely till some time after.

The maid, at the same time, added, that she was sure this usage of her
sweet young master would be the death of his grand-mamma, as indeed it
proved true; for the old lady, on hearing it, did not survive the news
a whole month, and as her fortune consisted in an annuity, out of which
she had laid up no reserves, she left nothing worth mentioning to her so
fatally envied darling, but absolutely refused to see his father before
she died.

When Mrs. Jones returned, and I observed her looks, they seemed so
unconcerned, and even nearest to pleased, that I half flattered myself
she was going to set my tortured heart at ease, by bringing me good
news; but this, indeed, was a cruel delusion of hope: the barbarian,
with all the coolness imaginable, stabs me to the heart, in telling
me, succinctly, that he was sent away, at least, on a four years' voyage
(here she stretched maliciously), and that I could not expect,
in reason, ever to see him again: and all this with such pregnant
circumstances, that I could not escape giving them credit, as they were,
indeed, too true!

She had hardly finished her report before I fainted away, and after
several successive fits, all the while wild and senseless, I miscarried
of the dear pledge of my Charles's love; but the wretched never die when
it is fittest they should die, and women are hard-lived! to a proverb.

The cruel and interested care taken to recover me, saved an odious life:
which, instead of the happiness and joys it had overflower in, all of
a sudden presented no view before me of any thing but the depth of
misery, horror, and the sharpest affliction.

Thus I lay six weeks, in the struggles of youth and constitution,
against the friendly efforts of death, which I constantly invoked to
my relief and deliverance, but which proved too weak for my wish. I
recovered at length, but into a state of stupefaction and despair, that
threatened me with the loss of my senses, and a mad house.

Time, however, that great comforter in ordinary, began to assuage the
violence of my suffering, and to-numb my feeling of them. My health
returned to me, though I still retained an air of grief, dejection, and
languor, which taking off from the ruddiness of my country complexion,
rendered it rather more delicate and affecting.

The landlady had all this while officiously provided, and seen that I
wanted for nothing: and as soon as she saw me retrieved into a condition
of answering her purpose, one day, after we had dined together, she
congratulated me on my recovery, the merit of which she took entirely
to herself, and all this by way of introduction to a most terrible, and
scurvy epilogue: "You are now," says she, "Miss Fanny, tolerably well,
and you are very welcome to stay in these lodgings as; long as you
please! you see I have asked you for nothing this long time, but truly
I have a call to make up a sum of money, which must be answered."
And, with that, presents me with a bill of arrears for rent, diet,
apothecaries' charges, nurse, etc., sum total twenty-three pounds,
seventeen and six-pence: towards discharging of which I had not in the
world (which she well knew) more than seven guineas, left by chance, of
my dear Charles's common stock, with me. At the same time, she desired
me to tell her what course I would take for payment. I burst out into
a flood of tears, and told her my condition: that I would sell what
few clothes I had, and that, for the rest, would pay her as soon as
possible. But my distress, being favourable to her view, only stiffened
her the more.

She told me, very cooly, that "she was indeed sorry for my misfortunes,
but that she must do herself justice, though it would go to the very
heart of her to send such a tender young creature to prison...." At the
word "prison!" every drop of my blood chilled, and my fright acted so
strongly upon me, that, turning as pale and faint as a criminal at the
first sight of his place of execution, I was on the point of swooning.
My landlady, who wanted only to terrify me to a certain point, and not
to throw me into a state of body inconsistent with her designs upon it,
began to sooth me again, and told me, in a tone composed to more pity
and gentleness, that "it would be my own fault, if she was forced to
proceed to such extremities; but she believed there was a friend to be
found in the world, who would make up matters to both our satisfactions,
and that she would bring him to drink tea with us that very afternoon,
when she hoped we would come to a right understanding in our affairs."
To all this, not a word of answer; I sat mute, confounded, terrified.

Mrs. Jones, however, judging rightly that it was time to strike while
the impressions were so strong upon me, left me to myself and to all
the terrors of an imagination, wounded to death by the idea of going to
prison, and, from a principle of self-preservation, snatching at every
glimpse of redemption from it.

In this situation I sat near half an hour, swallowed up in grief and
despair, when my landlady came in, and observing a death-like dejection
in my countenance, still in pursuance of her plan, put on a false pity,
and bidding me be of good heart: "Things," she said, "would be but
my own friend"; and closed with telling me "she had brought a very
honourable gentleman to drink tea with me, who would give me the best
advice how to get rid of all my troubles." Upon which, without waiting
for a reply, she goes out, and returns with this very honourable
gentleman, whose very honourable procuress she had been, on this, as
well as other occasions.

The gentleman, on his entering the room, made me a very civil bow, which
I had scarce strength, or presence of mind enough to return a curtsey
to; when the landlady, taking upon her to do all the honours of the
first interview (for I had never, that I remember, seen the gentleman
before), sets a chair for him, another for herself. All this while not a
word on either side; a stupid stare was all the face I could put on this
strange visit.

The tea was made, and the landlady, unwilling, I suppose, to lose any
time, observing my silence and shyness before this entire stranger:
"Come, Miss Fanny," says she, in a coarse familiar style, and tone of
authority, "hold up your head, child, and do not let sorrow spoil that
pretty face of yours. What! sorrows are only for a time; come, be free,
here is a worthy gentleman who has heard of your misfortunes, and is
willing to serve you; you must be better acquainted with him, do not you
now stand upon your punctilios, and this and that, but make your market
while you may."

At this so delicate, and eloquent harangue, the gentleman, who saw I
loooked frighted and amazed, and, indeed, incapable of answering, took
her up for breaking things in so abrupt a manner, as rather to shock
than incline me to an acceptance of the good he intended me then,
addressing himself to me, told me "he was perfectly acquainted with my
whole story, and every circumstance of my distress which he owned was a
cruel plunge for one of my youth and beauty to fall into.... that he had
long taken a liking to my person, for which he appealed to Mrs. Jones,
there present; but finding me so deeply engaged to another, he had lost
all hopes of succeeding, till he had heard the sudden reverse of fortune
that had happened to me, on which he had given particular orders to my
landlady to see that I should want for nothing; and that, had he not
been forced abroad to the Hague, on affairs he could not refuse himself
to, he would himself have attended me during my sickness;... that on
his return, which was the day before, he had, on learning my recovery,
desired my landlady's good offices to introduce him to me, and was
as angry, at least, as I was shocked, at the manner in which she had
conducted herself towards obtaining him that happiness; but, that to
show me how much he disdained her procedure, and how far he was from
taking any ungenerous advantage of my situation, and from exacting
any security for my gratitude, he would before my face, that instant,
discharge my debt entirely to my landlady, and give me her receipt in
full; after which I should be at liberty either to reject or grant his
suit, as he was much above putting any force upon my inclinations."

Whilst he was exposing his sentiments to me, I ventured just to look up
to him, and observed his figure, which was that of a very well-looking
gentleman, well made, of about forty, dressed in a suit of plain
clothes, with a large diamond ring on one of his fingers, the lustre of
which played in my eyes as he waved his hand in talking, and raised my
notions of his importance. In short, he might pass for what is commonly
called a comely black man, with an air of distinction natural to his
birth and condition.

To all his speeches, however, I answered only in tears that flower
plentifully to my relief, and choking up my voice, excused me from
speaking, very luckily, for I should not have known what to say.

The sight, however, moved him, as he afterwards told me, irresistibly,
and by way of giving me some reason to be less powerfully afflicted, he
drew out his purse, and calling for pen and ink, which the landlady was
prepared for, paid her every farthing of her demand, independent of a
liberal gratification which was to follow unknown to me, and taking a
receipt in full, very tenderly forced me to secure it, by guiding my
hand, which he had thrust it into, so as to make me passively put it
into my pocket.

Still I continued in a state of stupidity, or melancholic despair, as
my spirits could not yet recover from the violent shocks that they had
received; and the accommodating landlady had actually left the room, and
me alone with this strange gentleman, before I had observed it, and then
I observed it without alarm, for I was now lifeless, and indifferent to
every thing.

The gentleman, however, no novice in affairs of this sort, drew near me;
and, under the pretence of comforting me, first with his handkerchief
dried my tears as they ran down my cheeks: presently he ventured to kiss
me on my part, neither resistance nor compliance. I sat stock still; and
now looking on myself as bought by the payment that had been transacted
before me.

I did not care what became of my wretched body: and wanting life,
spirits, or courage to oppose the least struggle, even that of the
modesty of my sex, I suffered, tamely, whatever the gentleman pleased;
who proceeding insensibly from freedom to freedom, insinuating his hand
between my handkerchief and bosom, which he handled at discretion:
finding thus no repulse, and that every thing favoured, beyond
expectation, the completion of his desires, he took me in his arms, and
bore me, without life or motion, to the bed, on which laying me gently
downed, and having me at what advantage he pleased, I did not so much
as know what he was about, till recovering from a trance of lifeless
insensibility, I found him buried in me, whilst I lay passive and
innocent of the least sensations of pleasure: a death-cold corpse could
scarce have less life or sense in it. As soon as he had thus pacified
a passion which had too little respected the condition I was in, he got
off, and after recomposing the disorder of my clothes, employed himself
with the utmost tenderness to calm the transports of remorse and madness
at myself, with which I was seized, too late, I confess, for having
suffered on that bed, the embraces of an utter stranger I tore my hair,
wrung my hands, and beat my breast like a mad woman. But when my new
master, for in that light I then viewed him, applied himself to appease
me, as my whole rage was levelled at myself, no part of which I thought
myself permitted to aim at him, I begged of him with more submission
than anger, to leave me alone, that I might, at least, enjoy my
affliction in quiet. This he positively refused, for fear, as he
pretended, I should do myself a mischief. Violent passions seldom last
long, and those of women least of any. A dead still calm succeeded this
storm, which ended in a profuse shower of tears.

Had any one, but a few instants before, told me that I should have ever
known any man but Charles, I would have spit in his face or had I been
offered infinitely a greater sum of money than that I saw paid for me,
I had spurned the proposal in cold blood. But our virtues and our vices
depend too much on our circumstances; unexpectedly beset as I was,
betrayed by a mind weakened by a long severe affliction, and stunned
with the terrors of a goal, my defeat will appear the more excusable,
since I certainly was not present at, or a party in any sense to it.
However, as the first enjoyment is decisive, and he was now over the
bar, I thought I had no longer a right to refuse the caresses of one
that had got that advantage over me, no matter how obtained; conforming
myself then to this maxim, I considered myself as so much in his power,
that I endured his kisses and embraces without affecting struggles or
anger; not that he, as yet, gave me any pleasure, or prevailed over the
aversion of my soul, to give myself up to any sensation of that sort;
what I suffered, I suffered out of a kind of gratitude, and as a matter
of course what had passed.

He was, however, so regardful as not to attempt the renewal of those
extremities which had thrown me, just before, into such violent
agitations; but, now secure of possession, contented himself with
bringing me to temper by degrees, and waiting at the hand of time
for those fruits of generosity and courtship, which he since often
reproached himself with having gathered much too green, when, yielding
to the inability to resist him, and overborne by desires, he had wreaked
his passion on a mere lifeless, spiritless body, dead to all purpose of
joy, since taking none, it ought to be supposed incapable of giving any.
This is, however, certain; my heart never thoroughly forgave him the
manner in which I had fallen to him, although, in point of interest,
I had fallen to him, I had reason to be pleased that he found, in my
person, wherewithal to keep him from leaving me as easily as he had had
me.

The evening was, in the mean time, so far advanced, that the maid came
in to lay the cloth for supper, when I understood, with joy, that my
landlady, whose sight was present poison to me, was not to be with us.

Presently a neat and elegant supper was introduced, and a bottle of
Burgundy, with the other necessaries, were set on a dumb-waiter.

The maid quitting the room, the gentleman insisted, with a tender
warmth, that I should sit up in the elbow chair by the fire, and see him
eat, if I could not be prevailed on to eat myself. I obeyed with a heart
full or affliction, at the comparison it made between those delicious
tete-a-tetes with my very dear youth, and this forced situation, this
new awkward scene, imposed and obtruded on me a cruel necessity.

At supper, after a great many arguments used to comfort and reconcile
me to my fate, he told me that his name was H..., brother to the Earl
of L.... and that having, by the suggestions of my landlady, been led
to see me, he had found me perfectly to his taste, and given her
a commission to procure me at any rate, and that at length he had
succeeded, as much to his satisfaction as he passionately wished it
might be to mine adding, withal, some flattering assurances, that I
should have no cause to repent my knowledge of him.

I had now got down at least half a partridge, and three or four glasses
of wine, which he compelled me to drink by way of restoring nature, but
whether there was any thing extraordinary put into the wine, or whether
there wanted no more to revive the natural warmth of my constitution,
and give fire to the old train, I began no longer to look with that
constraint, not to say disguise, on Mr. H...., which I had hitherto
done but, withal, there was not the least grain of love mixed with this
softening of my sentiments: any other man would have been just the same
to me as Mr. H..., that stood in the same circumstances, and had done
for me, and with me, what he had done.

There are not, on earth at least, eternal griefs; mine were, if not at
an end, at least suspended: my heart, which had been so long overloaded
with anguish and vexation, began to dilate and open to the last gleam
of diversion or amusement. I wept a little, and my tears relieved me; I
sighed, and my sighs seemed to lighten me of a load that oppressed me;
my countenance grew, if not cheerful, at least more composed and free.

Mr. H..., who had watched, perhaps brought on this change, knew too well
not to seize it: he thrust the table imperceptibly from between us, and
bringing his chair to face me, he soon began, after preparing me by all
the endearments of assurance and protestations, to lay hold of my hands,
to kiss me, and once more to make free with my bosom, which, being at
full liberty from the disorder of a loose dishabile, now panted and
throbbed, less with indignation than with fear and bashfulness, at being
used so familiarly by still a stranger. But he soon gave me greater
occasion to exclaim, by stooping down and slipping his hands above my
garters; thence he strove to regain the pass, which he had before found
so open, and unguarded; but now he could not unlock the twist of my
thighs; I gently complained, and begged him to let me alone; told him
I was not well. However, he saw there was more form and ceremony in my
resistance, than good earnest; he made his conditions for desisting from
pursuing his point, that I should be put instantly to bed, whilst he
gave certain orders to the landlady, and that he would return in an
hour, when he hoped to find me more reconciled to his passion for me,
than I seemed at present. I neither assented nor denied, but my air and
manner of receiving his proposal, gave him to see that I did not think
myself enough my own mistress to refuse it.

Accordingly he went out and left me, when a minute or two after, before
I could recover myself into any composure for thinking, the maid came
in with her mistress's service, and a small silver orringer of what she
called a bridal posset, and desired me to eat it as I went to bed,
which consequently I did, and felt immediately a heat, a fire run like a
hue-and-cry through every part of my body; I burnt, I glowed, and wanted
even little of wishing for any man.

The maid, as soon as I was lain down, took the candle away, and wishing
me a good night, went out of the room, and shut the door after her.

She had hardly time to get down stairs, before Mr. H.... opened my room
door softly, and came in, now undressed, in his night-gown and cap,
with two lighted wax candles, and bolting the door, gave me, though I
expected him, some sort of alarm. He came a tip-toe to the bed side, and
saying with a gentle whisper: "Pray, my dear, do not be startled... I
will be very tender and kind to you." He then hurried off his clothes,
and leaped into bed, having given me openings enough, whilst he was
stripping, to observe his brawny structure, strong made limbs, and rough
shaggy breast.

The bed shook again when it received this new load. He lay on
the outside, where he kept the candles burning, no doubt for the
satisfaction of every sense, for as soon as he had kissed me, he rolled
down the bed clothes, and seemed transported with the view of all my
person at full length, which he covered with a profusion of kisses,
sparing no part of me. Then, being on his knees between my thighs, he
drew up his shirt, and bared all his hairy thighs, and stiff staring
truncheon, red top, and rooted into a thicket of curls, which covered
his belly to the novel, and gave it the air of a flesh brush; and soon
I feel it joining close to mine, when he had drove the nail up to the
head, and left no partition but the intermediate hair on both sides.

I had it now, I felt it now, and, beginning to drive, he soon gave
nature such a powerful summons down to her favourite quarters, that she
could no longer refuse repairing thither; all my animals spirits then
rushed mechanically to that center of attraction, and presently, inly
warmed, and stirred as I was beyond bearing, I lost all restraint, and
yielding to the force of the emotion, gave down, as mere woman, those
effusions of pleasure, which, in the strictness of still faithful love,
I could have wished to have kept in.

Yet oh! what an immense difference did I feel between this impression of
a pleasure merely animal, and struck out of the collision of the sexes,
by a passive bodily effect, from that sweet fury, that rage of active
delight which crowns the enjoyments of a mutual love passion, where two
hearts, tenderly and truly united, club to exalt the joy, and give it
a spirit and soul that bids defiance to that end which mere momentary
desires generally terminate in, when they die of a surfeit of
satisfaction!

Mr. H..., whom no distinctions of that sort seemed to distract, scarce
gave himself or me breathing time from the last encounter, but, as if he
had tasked himself to prove that the appearances of his vigour were
no signs hung out in vain, in a few minutes he was in a condition for
renewing the onset; to which, preluding with a storm of kisses, he drove
the same course as before, with unbated fervour; and thus, in repeated
engagements, kept me constantly in exercise, till dawn of morning, in
all which time he made me fully sensible of the virtues of his firm
texture of limbs, his square shoulders, broad chest, compact hard
muscles, in short a system of manliness, that might pass for no bad
image of our ancient sturdy barons, whose race is now so thoroughly
refined and frittered away into the more delicate and modern built frame
of our pap-nerved softlings, who are as pale, as pretty, and almost as
masculine as their sisters.

Mr. H..., content, however, with having the day break upon his triumph,
resigned me up to the refreshment of a rest we both wanted, and we soon
dropped into a profound sleep.

Though he was some time awake before me, yet he did not offer to disturb
a repose he had given me so much occasion for; but on my first stirring,
which was not till past ten o'clock, I was obliged to endure one more
trial of his manhood.

About eleven, in came Mrs. Jones, with two basins of the richest soup,
which her experience in these matters had moved her to prepare. I pass
over the fulsome compliments, the cant of the decent procuress, with
which she saluted us both; but though my blood rose at the sight of her,
I supprest my emotions, and gave all my concerne to reflections on what
would be the consequence of this new engagement.

But Mr. H..., who penetrated my uneasiness, did not suffer me to
languish under it, and acquainted me, that having taken a solid sincere
affection to me, he would begin by giving me one leading mark of it, in
removing me out of a house which must, for many reasons, be irksome and
disagreeable to me, into convenient lodgings, where he would take all
imaginable care of me; and desiring not to have any explanations with
my landlady, or be impatient till he returned, he dressed and went out,
having left me a purse with two and twenty guineas in it, being all
he had about him, as he express it, to keep my pocket still further
supplied.

As soon as he was gone, I felt the usual consequence of the first launch
into vice (for my love attachment to Charles never appeared to me in
that light). I was instantly borne away down the stream without making
back to the shore. My dreadful necessities, my gratitude, and above all,
to say the plain truth, the dissipation and diversion I began to find
in this new acquaintance, from the black corroding thoughts my heart had
been a prey to, ever since the absence of my dear Charles, concurred to
stun all my contrary reflections. If I now thought of my first, my only
charmer, it was still with the tenderness and regret of the fondest
love, embittered with the consciousness that I was no longer worthy
of him. I could have begged my bread with him all over the world, but
wretch that I was! I had neither the virtue or courage requisite not to
outlive my separation from him.

Yet, had not my heart been thus preengaged, Mr. H... might probably have
been the sole master of it; but the place was full, and the force of
conjectures alone had made him the possessor of my person; the charms
of which had, by the bye, been his sole object and passion, and were, of
course, no foundation for a love either very delicate or very durable.

He did not return till six in the evening', to take me away to my
new lodgings; and my moveables being soon packed, and conveyed into
a hackney coach, it cost me but little regret to take my leave of a
landlady whom I thought I had so much reason not to be over pleased
with; and as for her part, she made no other difference to my staying or
going, but what that of the profit created.

We soon got to the house appointed for me, which was that of a plain
tradesman, who, on the score of interest, was entirely at Mr. H...'s
devotion, and who let him the first floor, very genteelly furnished,
for two guineas a week, of which I was instated mistress, with a maid to
attend me.

He stayed with me that evening, and we had a supper from a neighbouring
tavern, after which, and a gay glass or two, the maid put me to bed. Mr.
H.... soon followed, and notwithstanding the fatigues of the preceding
night, I found no quarter nor remission from him: he piquet himself, as
he told me, on doing the honours of my new apartment.

The morning being pretty well advanced, we got to breakfast; and the ice
now broke, my heart, no longer engrossed by love, began to take ease,
and to please itself with such trifles Mr. H....'s liberal liking led
him to make his court to the usual vanity of our sex. Silks, laces:
ear rings, pearl necklace, gold watch, in sort, all the trinkets and
articles of dress were lavishly heaped upon me; the sence of which, if
it did not create returns of love, forced a kind of grateful fondness,
something like love: a distinction which it would be spoiling the
pleasure of nine tenths of the keepers in the town to make, and is, I
suppose, the very good reason why so few of them ever do make it.

I was now established the kept mistress in form, well lodged, with a
very sufficient allowance, and lighted up with all the lustre of dress.

Mr. H.... continued kind and tender to me; yet, with all this, I was
far from happy: for, besides my regrets for my dear youth, which,
though often suspended or diverted, still returned upon me in certain
melancholic moments with redoubled violence, I wanted more society,
more dissipation.

As to Mr. H.... he was so much my superior in every sense, that I felt
it too much to the disadvantage of the gratitude I owed him. Thus he
gained my esteem, though he could not raise my taste; I was qualified
for no sort of conversation with him, except one sort, and that is a
satisfaction which leaves tiresome intervals, if not filled up by love,
or other amusements.

Mr. H...., so experienced, so learned in the ways of women, numbers
of whom had passed through his hands, doubtless, soon perceived this
uneasiness, and, without approving, or liking me the better for it, had
the complaisance to indulge me.

He made suppers at my lodging, where he brought several companions of
his pleasures, with their mistresses; and by this means I got into a
circle of acquaintance, that soon stripped me of all the remains of
bashfulness and modesty which might be yet left of my country education,
and were, to a just taste, perhaps, the greatest of my charms.

We visited one another in form, and mimicked, as near as we could, all
the miseries, the follies, and impertinencies of the women in quality,
in the round of which they trifle away their time, without it ever
entering their little heads, that on earth there cannot subsist any
thing more silly, more flat, more insipid and worthless, than, generally
considered, their system of life is: they ought to treat the men as
their tyrants, indeed! were they to condemn them to it.

But though, amongst the kept mistresses (and I was now acquainted with
a good many, besides some useful matrons, who live by their connexions
with them), I hardly knew one that did not perfectly detest their
keepers, and, of course, made little or no scruple of any infidelity
they could safely accomplish, I had still no notion of wronging mine:
for, besides that no mark of jealousy on his side started me the hint,
or gave me the provocation to play him a trick of that sort, and that
his constant generosity, politeness, and tender attention to please me,
forced a regard to him, that, without affecting my heart, insured him my
fidelity, no object had yet presented that could overcome the habitual
liking I had contracted for him and I was on the eve of obtaining, from
the movements of his own voluntary generosity, a modest provision for
life, when an accident happened which broke all the measures he had
resolved upon in my favour.

I had now lived near seven months with Mr. H.... when one day returning
to my lodgings, from a visit in the neighbourhood, where I used to stay
longer, I found the street door open, and the maid of the house standing
at it, talking with some of her acquaintance, so that I came in without
knocking and, as I passed by, she told me Mr. H.... was above. I slept
up stairs into my own bed-chamber, with no other thought than of pulling
off my hat etc., and then to wait upon him in the dining room, into
which my bed-chamber had a door, as is common enough. Whilst I was
untying my hat strings, I fancied I heard my maid Hannah's voice and a
sort of tustle, which raised my curiosity; I stole softly to the door,
where a knot in the wood had been slipped out, and afforded a very
commanding peep-hole to the scene then in agitation, the actors of which
had been to earnestly employed to hear my opening my own door, from the
landing place of the stairs, into my bedchamber.

The first sight that struck me was Mr. H.... pulling and hauling this
coarse country strammel towards a couch that stood in a corner of the
dining-room; to which the girl made only a sort of awkward holdening
resistance, crying out so loud, that I, who listened at the door, could
scarce hear her: "Pray Sir, don't.., let me alone... I am not for your
turn... You cannot, sure, demean yourself with such a poor body as I...
Lord! Sir, my mistress may come home... I must not indeed... I will
cry out..." All of which did not hinder her from insensibly suffering
herself to be brought to the foot of the couch, upon which a push of no
mighty violence served to give her a very easy fall, and my gentleman
having got up his hands to the strong hold of her Virtue, she, no
doubt, thought it was time to give up the argument, and that all further
defense would be vain: and he, throwing her petticoats over her face,
which was now as red as scarlet, discovered a pair of stout, plump,
substantial thighs, and tolerably white; he mounted them round his haps,
and coming out with his drawn weapon, stuck it in the cloven sport,
where he seemed to find a less difficult entrance than perhaps he had
flattered himself with (for, by the way, this blouse had left her place
in the country, for a bastard), and, indeed, all his motions shewed he
was lodged pretty much at large. After he had done, his Deare gets up,
drops her petticoats down, and smooths her apron and handkerchief. Mr.
H.... looked a little silly, and taking out some money, gave it her,
with an air indifferent enough, bidding her be a good girl, and say
nothing.

Had I loved this man, it was not in nature for me to have had patience
to see the whole scene through: I should have broke in and played the
jealous princess with a vengeance. But that was not the case: my pride
alone was hurt, my heart not, and I could easier win upon myself to see
how far he would go, till I had no uncertainty upon my conscience.

The least delicate of all affairs of this sort being now over, I retired
softly into my closet, where I began to consider what I should do. My
first scheme naturally, was to rush in and upbraid them; this, indeed,
flattered my present emotions and vexations, as it would have given
immediate vent to them; but, on second thoughts, not being so clear
as to the consequence to be apprehended from such a step, I began my
discovery still a safer season, when dissembly my discovery till a safer
season, when Mr. H.... should have perfected the settlement he had
made overtures to me of, and which I was not to think such a violent
explanation, as I was indeed not equal to the management of, could
possibly forward, and might destroy. On the other hand, the provocation
seemed too gross, too flagrant not to give me some thoughts of revenge;
the very start of which idea restored me to perfect composure; and
delighted as I was with the confused plan of it in my head, I was
easily mistress enough of myself to support the part of ignorance I
had prescribed to myself; and as all this circle of reflections was
instantly over, I stole a tip-toe to the passage door, and opening it
with a noise, passed for having that moment come home; and after a short
pause, as if to pull off my things, I opened the door into the dining
room, where I fund the dowdy blowing the fire, and my faithful shepherd
walking about the room, and wistling, as cool and unconcerned as if
nothing had happened. I think, however, he had not much to brag of
having out-dissembled me: for I kept up, nobly, the character of our sex
for art, and went up to him with the same open air of frankness as I had
ever received him. He stayed but a little while, made some excuse for
not being able to stay the evening with me, and went out.

As for the wench, she was now spoiled, at least for my servant; and
scarce eight and forty hours were gone round, before her insolence, on
what had passed betwen Mr. H.... and her, gave me so fair an occasion
to turn her away, at a minute's warning, that, not to have done it would
have been the wonder; so that he could neither disapprove it nor find
in it the least reason to suspect my original motive. What became of her
afterwards, I know not; but generous as Mr. H.... was, he undoubtedly
made her amends: though, I dare answer, that he kept up no further
commerce with her of that sort; as his stooping to such a coarse morsel,
was only a sudden sally of lust, on seeing a wholesome looking, buxom
country wench, and no more strange than hunger, or even a whimsical
appetite's making a fling meal of neck-beef, for change of diet.

Had I considered this escapade of Mr. H.... in no more than that light
and contented myself with turning away the wench, I had thought and
acted right; but, flushed as I was with imaginary wrongs, I should have
held Mr. H... to have been cheaply off, if I had not pushed my revenge
farther, and repaid him, as exactly as could for the soul of me, in the
same coin.

Nor was this worthy act of justice long delayed: I had it too much at
heart. Mr. H... had, about a fortnight before, taken into his service
a tenant's son, just come out the country, a very handsome young lad,
scarce turned of nineteen, fresh as a rose, well sharped and clear
limbed: in short, a very good excuse for any woman's liking, even
though revenge had been out of the question; any woman, I say, who
was disprejudiced, and that wit and spirit enough to prefer a point of
pleasure to a point of pride.

Mr. H... had clapped a livery upon him; and his chief employ was, after
being shewn my lodgings, to bring and carry letters or messages between
his master and me; and as the situation of all kept ladies is not
the fittest to inspire respect, even to the meanest of mankind, and,
perhaps, less of it from the most ignorant, I could not help observing
that this lad, who was, I suppose, acquainted with my relation to his
master by his fellow servants, used to eye me in that bashful confused
way, more expressive, more moving and readier caught at by our sex, than
any other declarations whatever: my figure had, it seems, struck him,
and modest and innocent as he was, he did not himself know that the
pleasure he took in looking at me was love, or desire; but his eyes,
naturally wanton, and now inflamed with passion, spoke a great deal more
than he durst have imagined they did. Hitherto, indeed, I had only taken
notice of the comeliness of the youth, but without the least design: my
pride alone would have guarded me from a thought that way, had not
Mr. H....'s condescension with my maid, where there was not half the
temptation, in point of person, set me a dangerous example; but now I
began to look on this stripling as every way a delicious instrument
of my designed retaliation upon Mr. H.... of an obligation for which I
should have made a conscience to die in his debt.

In order then to pave the way for the accomplishment of my scheme, for
two or three times that the young fellow came to me with messages, I
managed so, or without affectation to have him admitted to my bed side,
or brought to me at my toilet, where I was dressing; and by carelessly
shewing or letting him, as if without meaning or design, sometimes my
bosom rather more bare than it should be; sometimes my hair, of which I
had a very fine head, in the natural flow of it while combing; sometimes
a neat leg, that had unfortunately slipt its garter, which I made no
scruple of tying before him, easily gave him the impressions favourable
to my purpose, which I could perceive to sparkle in his eyes, and glow
in his cheeks: then certain slight squeezes by the hand, as I took
letters from him, did his business completely.

When I saw him thus moved, and fired for my purpose, I inflamed him
yet more, by asking him several leading questions, such as: "Had he a
mistress?... was she prettier than me?... could he love such a one as I
was?..." and the like; to all which the blushing simpleton answered to
my wish, in a strain of perfect nature, perfect undebauched innocence,
but with all the awkwardness and simplicity of country breeding.

When I thought I had sufficiently ripened him for the laudable point I
had in view, one day that I expected him at a particular hour, I took
care to have the coast clear for the reception I designed him; and, as
I laid it, he came to the dining room door, tapped at it, and, in my
bidding him come in; he did so, and shut the door after him. I desired
him, then, to bolt it on the inside, pretending it would not otherwise
keep shut.

I was then lying at length upon that very couch, the scene of Mr.
H....'s polite joys, in an undress, which was with all the art of
negligence flowing loose, and in a most tempting disorder: no stays,
no hoop..., no incumbrance whatever. On the other hand, he stood at a
little distance, that gave me a full view of a fine featured, shapely,
healthy country lad, breathing the sweets of fresh blooming youth;
his hair, which was of a perfect shining black, played to his face in
natural side curls, and was set out with a smart tuck-up behind; new
buckskin breechs, that, clipping close, shewed the shape of a plump,
well made thigh; white stockings, garter-laced livery, shoulder knot,
altogether composed a figure of pure flesh and blood, and appeared
under no disgrace from the lowness of a dress, to which a certain spruce
neatness seems peculiarly fitted.

I bid him come towards me, and give me his letter, at the same time
throwing down, carelessly, a book I had in my hands. He coloured,
and came within reach of delivering me the letter, which he held out,
awkwardly enough, for me to take, with his eyes rivetted on my
bosom, which was, through the designed disorder of my handkerchief,
sufficiently bare, and rather than hid.

I, smiling in his face, took the letter, and immediately catching
hold of his shirt sleeve, drew him towards me, blushing, and almost
trembling; for surely his extreme bashfulness, and utter inexperience
called for, at least, all the advances to encourage him: his body
was now conveniently inclined toward me, and just softly chucking his
beardless chin, I asked him: "If he was afraid of a lady?..." and with
that took, and carrying his hands to my breasts, I press it tenderly
to them. They were now finely furnished, and raised in flesh, so that,
panting with desire, they rose and fell, in quick heaves, under his
touch: at this, the boy's eyes began to lighten with all the fires of
inflamed nature, and his cheeks flushed with a deep scarlet: tongue-tied
with joy, rapture, and bashfulness, he could not speak, but then his
looks, his emotion, sufficiently satisfied me that my train had taken,
and that I had no disappointment to fear.

My lips, which I threw in his way, so that he could not escape kissing
them, fixed, fired, and emboldened him: and now, glancing my eyes
towards that part of his dress which covered the essential object of
enjoyment, I plainly discovered the swell and commotion there; and as
I was now too far advanced to stop in so fair a way, and was indeed no
longer able to contain myself, or wait the slower progress of his maiden
bash-fulness (for such it seemed, and really was), I stole my hands upon
his thighs, down one of which I could both see and feel a stiff hard
body, confined by his breeches, that my fingers could discover no end
to. Curious then, and eager to unfold so alarming a mystery, playing,
as it were, with his buttons, which were bursting ripe from the active
force within, those of his waistband and fore-flap flew open at a touch,
when out IT started; and now, disengaged from the shirt, I saw, with
wonder and surprise, what? not the play thing of a boy, not the weapon
of a man, but a Maypole, of so enormous a standard, that had proportions
been observed, it must have belonged to a young giant. Yet I could not,
without pleasure, behold, and even venture to feel, such a length, such
a breadth of animated ivory! perfectly well turned and fashioned, the
proud stiffness of which distented its skin, whose smooth polish and
velvet softness might vie with that of the most delicate of our sex, and
whose exquisite whiteness was not a little set off by a sprout of black
curling hair round the root: through the jetty springs of which the fair
skin shewed as in a fine evening you may have remarked the clear light
through the branchwork of distant trees over-topping the summit of a
hill: then the broad of blueish-casted incarnate of the head, and
blue serpentines of its veins, altogether composed the most striking
assemblage of figure and colours in nature. In short, it stood an object
of terror and delight.

But what was yet more surprising, the owner of this natural curiosity,
through the want of occasions in the strictness of his home breeding,
and the little time he had been in town not having afforded him one; was
hitherto an absolute stranger, in practice at least, to the use of all
that manhood he was so nobly stocked with; and it now fell to my lot to
stand his first trial of it, if I could resolve to run the risks of its
disproportion to that tender part of me, which such an oversized machine
was very fit to lay in ruins.

But it was now of the latest to deliberate, for, by this time, the young
fellow, over heated with the present objects, and too high metled to be
longer curbed in by that modesty and awe which had hitherto restrained
him, ventured, under the stronger impulse, and instructive promptership
of nature alone, to slip his hands, trembling with eager impetuous
desires, under my petticoats; and seeing, I suppose, nothing extremely
severe in my looks, to stop or dash him, he feels out, and seizes,
gently, the center spot of his ardours. Oh then! the fiery touch of
his lingers determines me, and my fears melting away before the glowing
intolerable heat, my thighs disclose of themselves, and yield all
liberty to his hand: and now, a favourable movement giving my petticoats
a toss, the avenue lay too fair, too open to be missed. He is now upon
me: I had placed myself with a jerk under him, as commodious and open as
possible to his attempts, which were untoward enough, for his machine,
meeting with no inlet, bore and battered stiffly against me in random
pushes, now above, now below, now beside his point; till, burning with
impatience from its irritating touches, I guided gently, with my hand,
this furious fescue to where my young novice was now to be taught
his first lesson of pleasure. Thus he nicked, at length, the warm and
insufficient orifice; but he was made to find no breach impracticable,
and mine, though so often entered, was still far from wide enough to
take him easily in.

By my direction, however, the head of his unwieldy machine was so
critically pointed, that, feeling him fore-right against the tender
opening, a favourable motion from me met his timely thrust, by which
the lips of it, strenuously dilated, gave way to his thus assisted
impetuosity, so that we might both feel that he had gained a lodgment.
Pursuing then his point, he soon, by violent, and, to me, most painful
piercing thrusts, wedges himself at length so far in, as to be now
tolerably secure of his entrance: here he stuck, and I now felt such a
mixture of pleasure and pain, as there is no giving a definition of. I
dreaded alike his splitting me farther up, or his withdrawing; I could
not bear either to keep or part with him. The sense of pain, however,
prevailing, from his prodigious size and stiffness, acting upon me
in those continued rapid thrusts, with which he furiously pursued his
penetration, made me cry out gently: "Oh, my dear, you hurt me!" This
was enough to check the tender respectful boy even in his mid-career;
and he immediately drew out the sweet cause of my complaint, whilst his
eyes eloquently expressed, at once, his grief for hurting me, and
his reluctance at dislodging from quarters, of which the warmth and
closeness had given him a gust of pleasure, that he was now desire mad
to satisfy, and yet too much a novice not to be afraid of my withholding
his relief, on account of the pain he had put me to.

But I was, myself, far from being pleased with his having too much
regarded my tender exclaims; for now, more fired with the object before
me, as it still stood with the fiercest erection, unbonneted,
and displayed its broad vermilion head, I first gave the youth a
re-encouraging kiss, which he repaid me with a fervour that seemed at
once to thank me, and bribe my further compliance; and soon replaced
myself in a posture to receive, at all risk, the renewed invasion, which
he did not delay an instant: for, being presently remounted, I once
more felt the smooth hard gristle forcing an entrance, which he achieved
rather easier than before. Pained, however, as I was, with his efforts
of gaining a complete admission, which he was so regardful as to manage
by gentle degrees, I took care not to complain. In the mean time, the
soft strait passage gradually loosens, yields, and, stretched to its
utmost bearing, by the stick, thick, indriven engine, sensible, at once,
to the ravishing pleasure of the feel and the pain of the distension,
let him in about half way, when all the most nervous activity he now
exerted, to further his penetration, gained him not an inch of his
purpose: for, whilst he hesitated there, the crisis of pleasure overtook
him, and the close compressure of the warm surrounding flow drew from
him the ecstatic gush, even before mine was ready to meet it, kept up
by the pain I had endured in the course of the engagement, from the
insufferable size of his weapon, though it was not as yet in above half
its length.

I expected then, but without wishing it, that he would draw, but was
pleasingly disappointed: for he was not to be let off so. The well
breathed youth, hot-mettled, and flush with genial juices, was now
fairly in for making me know my driver. As soon, then, as he had made a
short pause, waking, as it were, out of the trance of pleasure (in which
every sense seemed lost for a while, whilst, with his eyes shut, and
short quick breathings, he had yielded down his maiden tribute), he
still kept his post, yet unsated with enjoyment, and solacing in these
so new delights; till his stiffness, which had scarce perceptibly
remitted, being thoroughly recovered to him, who had not once
unsheathed, he proceeded afresh to cleave and open to himself an entire
entry into me, which was not a little made easy to him by the balsamic
injection, with: which he had just plentifully moistened the whole
internals of the passage. Redoubling, then, the active energy of his
thrusts, favoured by the fervid appetency of my motions, the soft oiled
wards can no longer stand so effectual a picklock, but yield, and open
him an entrance. And now, with conspiring nature, and my industry,
strong to aid him, he pierces, penetrates, and at length, winning his
way inch by inch, gets entirely in, and finally, a home made thrust
sheaths it up to the guard; on the information of which, from the close
jointure of our bodies (insomuch that the hair on both sides perfectly
interweaved and incircled together), the eyes of the transported
youth sparkled with more joyous fires, and all his looks and motions
acknowledged excess of pleasure, which I now began to share, for I felt
him in my very vitals! I was quite sick with delight! stirred beyond
bearing with its furious agitations within me, and gorged and crammed,
even to a surfeit. Thus I lay gasping, panting under him, till his
broken breathings, faultering accents, eyes twinkling with humid fires,
lunges more furious, and an increased stiffness, gave me to hail
the approaches of the second period: it came... and the sweet youth,
overpowered with the ecstasy, died away in my arms, melting a flood
that shot in genial warmth into the innermost recesses of my body; every
conduit of which, dedicated to that pleasure, was on flow to mix with
it. Thus we continued for some instants, lost, breathless, senseless of
every thing, and in every part but those favourite ones of nature,
in which all that we enjoyed of life and sensation was now totally
concentered.

When our mutual trance was a little over, and the young fellow had
withdrawn that delicious stretcher, with which he had most plentifully
drowned all thoughts of revenge, in the sense of actual pleasure, the
widened wounded passage refunded a stream of pearly liquids, which
flowed down my thighs, mixed with streaks of blood, the marks of the
ravage of that monstrous machine of his, which had now triumphed over
a kind of second maidenhead. I stole, however, my handkerchief to those
parts, and wiped them as dry as I could, whilst he was re-adjusting and
buttoning up.

I made him sit down by me, and as he had gathered courage from such
extreme intimacy, he gave me an aftercourse of pleasure, in a natural
burst of tender gratitude and joy, at the new scenes of bliss I had
opened to him: scenes positively new, as he had never before had the
least acquaintance with that mysterious mark, the cloven stamp of female
distinction, though nobody better qualified than he to penetrate into its
deepest recesses, or do it nobler justice. But when, by certain motions,
certain unquietness of his hands, that wandered not without design, I
found he languished for satisfying a curiosity, natural enough, to view
and handle those parts which attract and concenter the warmest force
of imagination, charmed, as I was, to have any occasion of obliging and
humouring his young desires, I suffered him to proceed as he pleased,
without check or control, to the satisfaction of them.

Easily, then, reading in my eyes the full permission of myself to
all his wishes, he scarce pleased himself more than me; when, having
insinuated his hand under my petticoat and shift, he presently removed
those bars to the sight, by slily lifting them upwards, under favour
of a thousand kisses, which he thought, perhaps, necessary to divert my
attention from what he was about. All my drapery being now rolled up to
my waist, I threw myself into such a posture upon the couch, as gave up
to him, in full view, the whole region of delight, and all the luxurious
landscape around it. The transported youth devoured every thing with
his eyes, and tried, with his fingers, to lay more open to his sight
the secrets of that dark and delicious deep: he opens the folding lips,
the softness of which, yielding entry to any thing of a hard body, close
round it, and oppose the sight; and feeling further, meets with, and
wonder at, a soft fleshy excrescence, which, limber and relaxed after
the late enjoyment, now grew, under the touch and examination of
his fiery fingers, more and more stiff and considerable, till the
titillating ardours of that so sensible part made me sigh, as if he had
hurt me; on which he withdrew his curious probing fingers, asking me
pardon, as it were, in a kiss that rather increased the flame there.

Novelty ever makes the strongest impressions, and in pleasures,
especially; no wonder then, that he was swallowed up in raptures of
admiration of things so interesting by their nature, and now seen and
handled for the first time. On my part, I was richly overpaid for the
pleasure I gave him, in that of examining the power of those objects
thus abandoned to him, naked and free to his loosest wish, over the
artless, natural stripling: his eyes streaming fire, his cheeks
glowing with a florid red, his fervid frequent sighs, whilst his hands
convulsively squeezed, opened, pressed together again the lips and
sides of that deep flesh wound, or gently twitched the over-growing
moss; and all proclaimed the excess, the riot of joys, in having his
wantonness thus humoured. But he did not long abuse my patience, for the
objects before him had now put him by all his, and, coming out with
that formidable machine of his, he lets the fury loose, and pointing it
directly to the pouting-lip mouth, that bid him sweet defiance in dumb
shew, squeezes in his head, and, driving with refreshed rage, breaks in,
and plugs up the whole passage of that soft pleasure-conduit pipe, where
he makes all shake again, and put, once more, all within me into such
an uproar, as nothing could still, but a fresh inundation from the
very engine of those flames, as well as from all the springs with which
nature floats that reservoir of joy, when risen to its floodmark.

I was now so bruised, so battered, so spent with this overmatch, that
I could hardly stir, or raise myself, but lay palpitating, till the
ferment of my senses subsiding by degrees, and the hour striking at
which I was obliged to dispatch my young man, I tenderly advised him of
the necessity there was for parting; at which I felt so much displeasure
as he could do, who seemed eagerly disposed to keep the field, and to
enter on a fresh action. But the danger was too great, and after some
hearty kisses of leave, and recommendations of secrecy and discretion,
I forced myself to send him away, not without assurances of seeing him
again, to the same purpose, as soon as possible, and thrust a guinea
into his hands: not more, less, being too flush of money, a suspicion
or discovery might arise from thence; having everything to fear from the
dangerous indiscretion of that age in which young fellows would be too
irresistible, too charming, if we had not that terrible fault to guard
against.

Giddy and intoxicated as I was with such satiating draughts of pleasure,
I still lay on the couch, supinely stretched out, in a delicious languor
diffused over all my limbs, hugging myself for being thus revenged to
my heart's content, and that in a manner so precisely alike, and on
the identical spot in which I had received the supposed injury. No
reflections on the consequences ever once perplexed me, nor did I make
myself one single reproach for having, by this step, completely entered
myself into a profession more decried than disused. I should have held
it ingratitude to the pleasure I had received, to have repented of it;
and since I was now over the bar, I thought, by plunging head and ears
into the stream I was hurried away by, to drown all sense of shame or
reflection.

Whilst I was thus making these laudable dispositions, and whispering
to myself a kind of tacit vow of incontinency, enters Mr. H... The
consciousness of what I had been doing deepened yet the glowing of my
cheeks, flushed with the warmth of the late action, which, joined to
the piquant air of my dishabile, drew from Mr. H.... a compliment on my
looks, which he was proceeding to bask the sincerity of with proofs, and
that with so brisk an action, as made me tremble for fear of a discovery
from the condition those parts were left in from their late severe
handling: the orifice dilated and inflamed, the lips swollen with their
uncommon distension, the ringlets pressed down, crushed and uncurled
with the over flowing moisture that had wet everything round it; in
short, the different feel and state of things would hardly have passed
upon one of Mr. H.....'s nicety and experience unaccounted for but by
the real cause. But here the woman saved me: I pretended a violent
disorder of my head, and a feverish heat, that indisposed me too much to
receive his embraces. He gave in to this, and good naturedly desisted.
Soon after, an old lady coming in made a third, very apropos for the
confusion I was in, and Mr. H...., after bidding me take care of myself,
and recommending me to my repose, left me much at ease and relieved by
his absence.

In the close of the evening, I took care to have prepared for me a
warm bath of aromatik and sweet herbs; in which having fully laved and
solaced myself, I came out voluptuously refreshed in body and spirit.

The next morning waking pretty early, after a night's perfect rest and
composure, it was not without some dread and uneasiness that I thought
of what innovation that tender soft system of mine might have sustained,
from the shock of a machine so sized for its destruction.

Struck with this apprehension, I scarce dared to carry my hand thither,
to inform myself of the state and posture of things.

But I was soon agreeably cured of my fears.

The silky hair that covered round the borders, now smoothed and
re-pruned, had resumed its wonted curl and trimness; the fleshy pouting
lips that had stood the brunt of the engagement, were no longer swollen
or moisture-drenched; and neither they, nor the passage into which they
opened, that had suffered so great a dilation, betrayed any the least
alteration, outwardly or inwardly, to the most curious research,
notwithstanding the laxity that naturally follows the warm bath.

This continuation of that grateful stricture which is in us, to the men,
the very jet of their pleasure, I owed, it seems, to a happy habit of
body, juicy, plump and furnished, towards the texture of those parts,
with a fullness of soft springy flesh, that yielding sufficiently, as it
does, to almost any distension soon recovers itself so as to re-tighten
that strict compression of its mantlings and folds, which form the sides
of the passage, wherewith it so tenderly embraces and closely clips any
foreign body introduced into it, such as my exploring finger then was.

Finding then every thing in due tone and order, I remember my fears,
only to make a jest of them to myself. And now, palpably mistress of
any size of man, and triumphing in my double achievement of pleasure and
revenge, I abandoned myself entirely to the ideas of all the delight I
had swam in. I lay stretching out, glowingly alive all over, and tossing
with burning impatience for the renewal of joys that had sinned but in
a sweet excess; nor did I lose my longing, for about ten in the morning,
according to expectation, Will, my new humble sweetheart, came with a
message from his master, Mr. H...., to know how I did. I had taken care
to send my maid on an errand into the city, that I was sure would take
up time enough; and, from the people of the house, I had nothing to
fear, as they were plain good sort of folks, and wise enough to mind no
more other people's business than they could well help.

All dispositions then made, not forgetting that of lying in bed to
receive him, when he was entered the door of my bed chamber, a latch,
that I governed by a wire, descended and secured it.

I could not but observe that my young minion was as much spruced out as
could be expected from one in his condition: a desire of pleasing that
could not be indifferent to me, since it proved that I pleased him;
which, I assure you, was now a point I was not above having in view.

His hair trimly dressed, clean linen, and, above all, a hale, ruddy,
wholesome country look, made him out as pretty a piece of woman's meat
as you could see, and I should have thought any one much out of taste,
that could not have made a hearty meal of such a morsel as nature seemed
to have designed for the highest diet of pleasure.

And why should I here suppress the delight I received from this
amiable creature, in remarking each artless look, each motion of
pure indissembled nature, betrayed by his wanton eyes; or shewing,
transparently, the glow and suffusion of blood through his fresh, clear
skin, whilst even his stury rustic pressure wanted not their peculiar
charm? Oh! but, say you, this was a young fellow of too low a rank of
life to deserve so great a display. May be so: but was my condition,
strictly considered, one jot more exalted? or, had I really been much
above him, did not his capacity of giving such exquisite pleasure
sufficiently raise and enoble him, to me, at least? Let who would,
for me cherish, respect, and reward the painter's, the statuary's, the
musician's art, in proportion to the delight taken in them: but at my
age, and with my taste for pleasure, a taste strongly constitutional
to me, the talent of pleasing, with which nature has endowed a handsome
person, formed to me the greatest of all merits; compared to which, the
vulgar prejudices in favour of titles, dignities, honours, and the like,
held a very low rank indeed. Nor perhaps would the beauties of the body
be so much affected to be held cheap, were they, in their nature, to be
bought and delivered. But for me, whose natural philosophy all resided
in the favourite center of sense, and who was ruled by its powerful
instinct in taking pleasure by its right handle, I could scarce have
made a choice more to my purpose.

Mr. H....'s loftier qualifications of birth, fortune and sense, laid
me under a sort of subjection and constraint, that were far from making
harmony in the concert of love; nor had he, perhaps, thought me worth
softening that superiority to; but, with this lad, I was more on the
level which love delights in.

We may say what we please, but those we can be the easiest and freest
with, are ever those we like, not to say love the best.

With this stripling, all whose art of love was the action of it, I
could, without check of awe or restraint, give a loose to jay, and
execute every scheme of dalliance my fond fancy might put me on, in
which he was, in every sense, a most exquisite companion. And now my
great pleasure lay in humouring all the petulances, all the wanton
frolic of a raw novice just fledged, and keen on the burning scent of
his game, but unbroken to the sport: and, to carry on the figure, who
could better read the wood than he, or stand fairer for the heart of the
hunt?

He advanced then to my bed side, and whilst he faultered out his
message, I could observe his colour rise, and his eyes lighten with joy,
in seeing me in a situation as favourable to his loosest wishes, as if
he had bespoke the play.

I smiled, and put out my hand towards him, which he kneeled down to
(a politeness taught him by love alone, that great master of it) and
greedily kissed. After exchanging a few confused questions and answers,
I asked him if he would come to bed to me, for the little time I could
venture to detain him. This was just asking a person, dying with hunger,
to feast upon the dish on earth the most to his palate. Accordingly,
without further reflection, his clothes were off in an instant; when,
blushing still more at this new liberty, he got under the bed clothes
I held up to receive him, and was now in bed with a woman for the first
time in his life.

Here began the usual tender preliminaries, as delicious, perhaps, as the
crowning act of enjoyment itself; which they often beget an impatience
of, that makes pleasure destructive of itself, by hurrying on the
final period, and closing that scene of bliss, in which the actors
are generally too well pleased with their parts, not to wish them an
eternity of duration.

When we had sufficiently graduated our advances towards the main point,
by toying, kissing, clipping, feeling my breasts, now round and
plump, feeling that part of me I might call a furnace mouth, from the
prodigious intense heat his fiery touches had rekindled there, my young
sportsman, emboldened by the very freedom he could wish, wontonly takes
my hand, and carries it to that enormous machine of his, that stood with
a stiffness! a hardness! an upward bend of erection! and which, together
with it bottom dependence, the inestimable bulse of ladies jewels,
formed a grand showout of goods indeed! Then its dimensions, mocking
either grasp or span, almost renewed my terrors.

I could not conceive how, or by what means I could take, or put such
a bulk out of sight. I stroked it gently, on which the mutinous rogue
seemed to swell, and gather a new degree of fierceness and insolence; so
that finding it grew not to be trifled with any longer, I prepared for
rubbers in good earnest.

Slipping then a pillow under me, that I might give him the fairest play,
I guided officiously with my hand this furious battering ram, whose ruby
head, presenting nearest the resemblance of a heart, I applied to its
proper mark, which lay as finely elevated as we could wish; my hips
being borne up, and my thighs at their utmost extension, the gleamy
warmth that shot from it, made him feel that he was at the mouth of the
indraught, and driving fore right, the powerfully divided lips of that
pleasure-thirsty channel received him. He hesitated a little; then,
settled well in the passage, he makes his way up the straights of it,
with a difficulty nothing more than pleasing, widening as he went so
as to distend and smooth each soft furrow: our pleasure increasing
deliciously, in proportion to our points of mutual touch increased in
that so vital part of me which I had now taken him, all indriven, and
completely sheathed; and which, crammed as it was, stretched splitting
ripe, gave it so gratefully straight an accommodation! so strict a fold!
a suction so fierce! that gave and took unutterable delight. We had now
reached the closest point of union; but when he beckened to come on the
fiercer, as if I had ben actuated by a fear of losing him, in the height
of my fury, I twist my legs round his naked loins, the flesh of which,
so firm, so springy to the touch, quivered again under the pressure; and
now I had him every way encircled and begirt; and having drawn him home
to me, I kept him fast there, as if I had sought to unite bodies with
him at that point. This bred a pause of action, a pleasure stop, whilst
that delicate glutton, my nether mouth, as full as it could hold, kept
palating, with exquisite relish, the morsel that so deliciously ingorged
it. But nature could not long endure a pleasure that it so highly
provoked without satisfying it: pursuing then its darling end, the
battery recommenced with redoubled exertion; nor lay I inactive on my
side, but encountering him with all the impetuosity of motion I was
mistress of, the downy cloth of our meeting mount was now of real use
to break the violence of the tilt; and soon, indeed! the highwrought
agitation, the sweet urgency of this to-and-fro friction, raised the
titillation on me to its height; so that finding myself on the point
of going, and loath to leave the tender partner of my joys behind me, I
employed all the forwarding motions and arts my experience suggested to
me, to promote his keeping me company to our journey's end. I not only
then tightened the pleasure-girth round my restless inmate, by a secret
spring of friction and compression that obeys the will in those parts,
but stole my hand softly to that store bag of nature's prime sweets,
which is so pleasingly attached to its conduit pipe, from which we
receive them; there feeling, and most gently indeed, squeezing those
tender globular reservoirs, the magic touch took instant effect,
quickened, and brought on upon the spur the symptoms of that sweet
agony, the melting moment of dissolution, when pleasure dies by
pleasure, and the mysterious engine of it overcomes the titillation
it has raised in those parts, by plying them with the stream of a warm
liquid, that in itself the highest of all titillations, and which they
thirstily express and draw in like the hot natured leach, which, to
cool itself, tenaciously extracts all the moisture within its sphere of
execution. Chiming then to me, with exquisite consent, as I melted away,
his oily balsamic injection, mixing deliciously with the sluices in flow
from me, sheathed and blunted all the stings of pleasure, whilst a
voluptuous languor possest, and still maintained us motionless, and fast
locked in one another's arms. Alas! that these delights should be no
longer-lived; for now the point of pleasure, unedged by enjoyment, and
all the brisk sensations flattened upon us, resigned us up to the cool
cares of insipid life. Disengaging myself then from his embrace, I made
him sensible of the reasons there were for his present leaving me; on
which, though reluctantly, he put on his clothes, with as little
expedition, however, as he could help, wantonly interrupting himself,
between whiles, with kisses, touches and embraces I could not refuse
myself to. Yet he happily returned to his master before he was missed;
but, at taking leave, I forced him (for he had sentiments enough to
refuse it) to receive money enough to buy a silver watch, that great
article of subaltern finery, which he at length accepted of, as a
remembrance he was carefully to preserve of my affections.

And here, Madam, I ought, perhaps, to make you an apology for this
minute detail of things, that dwelt so strongly upon my memory, after
so deep an impression; but, besides that this intrigue bred one great
revolution in my life, which historical truth requires I should not sink
from you, may I not presume that so exalted a pleasure ought not to be
ungratefully forgotten, or suppressed by me, because I found it in a
character in low life; where, by the by, it is oftener met with, purer,
and more unsophisticated, than among the false, ridiculous refinements
with which the great suffer themselves to be so grossly cheated by their
pride: the great! than whom, there exist few amongst those they call
the vulgar, who are more ignorant of, or who cultivate less, the art of
living than they do; they, I say, who for ever mistake things the most
foreign to the nature of pleasure itself; whose capital favourite object
is enjoyment of beauty, wherever that rare incaluable gift is found,
without distinction of birth, or station.

As love never had, so now revenge had no longer any share in my commerce
in this handsome youth. The sole pleasures of enjoyment were now the
link I held to him by: for though nature had done such great maters
for him in his outward form, and especially in that superb piece of
furniture she had so liberally enriched him with; though he was thus
qualified to give the senses their richest feast, still there was
something more wanting to create in me, and constitute the passion of
love. Yet Will had very good qualities too: gentle, tractable, and, above
all, grateful; silentious, even to a fault: he spoke, at any time, very
little, but made it up emphatically with action; and, to do him justice,
he never gave me the least reason to complain, either of any tendency to
encroach upon me for the liberties I allowed him, or of his indiscretion
in blabbing them. There is, then, a fatality in love, or have loved him
I must; for he was really a treasure, a bit for the Bonne Bouche of a
duchess; and, to say the truth, my liking for him was so extreme, that
it was distinguishing very nicely to deny that I loved him.

My happiness, however, with him did not last long, but found an end
from my own imprudent neglect. After having taken even superfluous
precautions against a discovery, our success in repeated meetings
emboldened me to omit the barely necessary ones. About a month after
our first intercourse, one fatal morning (the season Mr. H.... rarely
or never visited me in) I was in my closet, where my toilet stood, in
nothing but my shift, a bed gown and under petticoat. Will was with me,
and both ever too well disposed to baulk an opportunity. For my part,
a whim, a wanton toy had just taken me, and I had challenged my man to
execute it on the spot, who hesitated not to comply with my humour:
I was set in the arm chair, my shift and petticoat up, my thighs wide
spread and mounted over the arms of the chair, presenting the fairest
mark to Will's drawn weapon, which he stood in act to plunge into me,
when, having neglected to secure the chamber door, and that of the
closet standing a-jar, Mr. H.... stole in upon us, before either of us
was aware, and saw us precisely in these convicting attitudes.

I gave a great scream, and dropped my petticoat: the thunder-struck
lad stood trembling and pale, waiting his sentence of death. Mr. H....
looked sometimes at one, sometimes at the other, with a mixture of
indignation and scorn; and, without saying a word, spun upon his heel
and went out.

As confused as I was, I heard him very distinctly turn the key, and lock
the chamber door upon us, so that there was no escape but through
the dining room, where he himself was walking about with distempered
strides, stamping in a great chafe, and doubtless debating what he would
do with us.

In the mean time, poor William was frightened out of his senses, and, as
much need as I had of spirits myself, I was obliged to employ them all
to keep his a little up. The misfortune I had now brought upon him,
endeared him the more to me, and I could have joyfully suffered any
punishment he had not shared in. I watered, plentifully, with my tears,
the face of the frightened youth, who sat, not having strength to stand,
as cold and as lifeless as a statue.

Presently Mr. H.... comes in to us again, and made us go before him into
the dining room, trembling and dreading the issue, Mr. H.....sat down on
a chair whilst we stood like criminals under examination; and, beginning
with me, asked me, with an even firm tone of voice, neither soft nor
severe, but cruelly indifferent, what I could say for myself, for having
abused him in so unworthy a manner, with his own servant too, and how he
had deserved this of me?

Without adding to the guilt of my infidelity, that of an audacious
defence of it, in the old style of a common kept miss, my answer was
modest, and often interrupted by my tears, in substance as follows:
"That I never had a single thought of wronging him" (which was true),
"till I had seen him taking the last liberties with my servant wench"
(here he coloured prodigiously), "and that my resentment at that, which
I was over-awed from giving vent to by complaints, or explanations with
him, had driven me to a course that I did not pretend to justify; but
that as to the young man, he was entirely faultless; for that, in
the view of making him the instrument of my revenge, I had down right
seduced him to what he had done; and therefore hoped, whatever he
determined about me, he would distinguish between the guilty and the
innocent; and that; for the rest, I was entirely at his mercy."

Mr. H.... on hearing what I said, hung his head a little; but instantly
recovering himself, he said to me, as near as I can retain, to the
following purpose:

"Madam, I owe shame to myself, and confess you have fairly turned
the tables upon me. It is not with one of your cast of breeding and
sentiments, that I allow you so much reason on your side, as great
difference of the provocations: be it sufficient that I should enter
into a discussion of the very to have changed my resolution, in
consideration of what you reproach me with; and I own, too, that your
clearing that rascal there, is fair and honest in you. Renew with you I
cannot: the affront is too gross. I give you a week's warning to get out
of these lodgings; whatever I have given you, remains to you; and as I
never intend to see you more, the landlord will pay you fifty pieces on
my account, with which, and every debt paid, I hope you will own I do
not leave you in a worse condition than what I took you up in, or that
you deserve of me. Blame yourself only that it is no better."

Then, without giving me time to reply, he addressed himself to the young
fellow:

"For you, spark, I shall, for your father's sake, take care of you: the
town is no place for such an easy fool as thou art; and to-morrow you
shall set out, under the charge of one of my men, well recommended, in
my name, to your father, not to let you return and be spoil'd here."

At these words he went out, after my vainly attempting to stop him, by
throwing myself at his feet. He shook me off, though he seemed greatly
moved too, and took Will away with him, who, I dare swear, thought
himself very cheaply off.

I was now once more a-drift, and left upon my own hands, by a gentleman
whom I certainly did not deserve. And all the letters, arts, friends,
entreaties that I employed within the week of grace in my lodging,
could never win on him so much as to see me again. He had irrevocably
pronounced my doom, and submission to it was my only part. Soon after he
married a lady of birth and fortune, to whom, I have heard he proved an
irreproachable husband.

As for poor Will, he was immediately sent down to the country to his
father, who was an easy farmer, where he was not four months before an
inn-keepers' buxom young widow, with a very good stock, both in
money and trade, fancied, and perhaps pre-acquainted with his secret
excellencies, married him: and I am sure there was, at least, one good
foundation for their living happily together.

Though I should have been charmed to see him before he went, such
measures were taken, by Mr. H....'s orders, that it was impossible;
otherwise I should certainly have endeavoured to detain him in town, and
would have spared neither offers nor expense to have procured myself the
satisfaction of keeping him with me. He had such powerful holds upon my
inclinations as were not easily to be shaken off, or replaced; as to my
heart, it was quite out of the question: glad, however, I was from my
soul, that nothing worse, and as things turned out, nothing better could
have happened to him.

As to Mr. H..., though views of conveniency made me, at first, exert
myself to regain his affection, I was giddy and thoughtless enough to be
much easier reconciled to my failure than I ought to have been; but as I
never had loved him, and his leaving me gave me a sort of liberty that I
had often longed for, I was soon comforted; and flattering myself, that
the stock of youth and beauty I was going to trade with, could hardly
fail of procuring me a maintenance, I saw myself under the necessity of
trying my fortune with them, rather, with pleasure and gaiety, than with
the least idea of despondency.

In the mean time, several of my acquaintances among the sisterhood,
who had soon got wind of my misfortune, flocked to insult me with their
malicious consolations. Most of them had long envied me the affluence
and splendour I had been maintained in; and though there was scarce
one of them that did not at least deserve to be in my case, and would
probably, sooner or later, come to it, it was equally easy to remark,
even in their affected pity, their secret pleasure at seeing me
thus discarded, and their secret grief that it was no worse with me.
Unaccountable malice of the human heart! and which is not confined to
the class of life they were of.

But as the time approached for me to come to some resolution how to
dispose of myself, and I was considering, round where to shift my
quarters to, Mrs. Cole, a middle aged discreet sort of woman, who had
been brought into my acquaintance by one of the misses that visited me,
upon learning my situation, came to offer her cordial advice and service
to me; and as I had always taken to her more than to any of my female
acquaintances, I listened the easier to her proposals. And, as it
happened, I could not have put myself into worse, or into better hands
in all London: into worse, because keeping a house of conveniency, there
were no lengths in lewdness she would not advise me to go, in compliance
with her customers; no schemes, or pleasure, or even unbounded
debauchery, she did not take even a delight in promoting: into a better,
because nobody having had more experience of the wicked part of the
town than she had, was fitter to advise and guard one against the worst
dangers of our profession; and what was rare to be met with in those
of her's, she contented herself with a moderate living profit upon her
industry and good offices, and had nothing of their greedy rapacious
turn. She was really too a gentlewoman born and bred, but through a
train of accidents reduced to this course, which she pursued, partly
through necessity, partly through choice, as never woman delighted more
in encouraging a brisk circulation of the trade, for the sake of the
trade itself, or better understood all the mysteries and refinements
of it, than she did; so that she was consummately at the top of her
profession, and dealt only with customers of distinction: to answer the
demands of whom she kept a competent number of her daughters in constant
recruit (so she called those whom their youth and personal charms
recommended to her adoption and management: several of whom, by her
means, and through her tuition and instructions, succeeded very well in
the world).

This useful gentlewoman upon whose protection I now threw myself, having
her reasons of state, respecting Mr. H...., for not appearing too much
in the thing herself, sent a friend of her's, on the day appointed for
my removal, to conduct me to my new lodgings at a brush-maker's in E----
street, Covent Garden, the very next door to her own house, where she
had no conveniences to lodge me herself: lodgings that, by having been
for several successions tenanted by ladies of pleasures, the landlord
of them was familiarized to their ways; and provided the rent was paid,
every thing else was as easy and commodious as one could desire.

The fifty guineas promised me by Mr. H...., at his parting with me,
having been duly paid me, all my clothes and moveables chested up, which
were at least of two hundred pounds value, I had them conveyed into a
coach, where I soon followed them, after taking a civil leave of the
landlord and his family, with whom I had never lived in a degree
of familiarity enough to regret the removal; but still, the very
circumstance of its being a removal, drew tears from me. I left, too,
a letter of thanks for Mr. H...., from whom I concluded myself, as I
really was, irretrievably separated.

My maid I had discharged the day before, not only because I had her of
Mr. H...., but that I suspected her of having some how or other been the
occasion of his discovering me, in revenge, perhaps, for my not having
trusted her with him.

We soon got to my lodgings, which, though not so handsomely furnished,
nor so showy as those I left, were to the full as convenient, and at
half price, though on the first floor. My trunks were safely landed, and
stowed in my apartments, where my neighbour, and now gouvernante, Mrs.
Cole, was ready with my landlord to receive me, to whom she took care to
set me out in the most favourable light, that of one from whom there was
the clearest reason to expect the regular payment of his rent: all the
cardinal virtues attributed to me, would not have had half the weight of
that recommendation alone.

I was now settled in lodgings of my own, abandoned to my own conduct,
and turned loose upon the town, to sink or swim, as I could manage with
the current of it; and what were the consequences, together with
the number of adventures which befell me in the exercise of my new
profession, will compose the mater of another letter: for surely it is
high time to put a period! to this.

I am,

MADAM,

Yours, etc., etc., etc.

     THE END OF THE FIRST LETTER




LETTER THE SECOND

Madam:

If I have delayed the sequel of my history, it has been purely to allow
myself a little breathing time not without some hopes, that, instead of
pressing me to a continuation, you would have acquitted me of the task
of pursuing a confession, in the course of which my self-esteem has so
many wounds to sustain.

I imagined, indeed, that you would have been cloyed and tired with
uniformity of adventures and expressions, inseparable from a subject of
this sort, whose bottom, or groundwork being, in the nature of things
eternally one and the same, whatever variety of forms and modes the
situations are susceptible of, there is no escaping a repetition of
near the same images, the same figures, the same expressions, with this
further inconvenience added to the disgust it creates, that the words
Joys, Ardours, Transports, Extasies and the rest of those pathetic terms
so congenial to, so received in the Practice of Pleasure, flatten
and lose much of their due spirit and energy by the frequency they
indispensably recur with, in a narrative of which that Practice
professedly composes the whole basis. I must therefore trust to the
candour of your judgment, for your allowing for the disadvantage I
am necessarily under in that respect; and to your imagination and
sensibility, the pleasing taks of repairing it, by their supplements,
where my descriptions flag or fail: the one will readily place the
pictures I present before your eyes; the other give life to the colours
where they are dull, or worn with too frequent handling.

What you say besides, by way of encouragement concerning the extreme
difficulty of continuing so long in one strain, in a mean tempered with
taste, between the revoltingness of gross, rank and vulgar expressions,
and the ridicule of mincing metaphors and affected circumlocutions, is
so sensible, as well as good-natured, that you greatly justify me to
myself for my compliance with a curiosity that is to be satisfied so
extremely at my expense.

Resuming now where I broke off in my last, I am in my way to remark to
you, that it was late in the evening before I arrived at my lodgings,
and Mrs. Cole, after helping me to range and secure my things, spent
the whole evening with me in my apartment, where we supped together, in
giving me the best advice and instruction with regard to the new stage
of my profession I was now to enter upon; and passing thus from a
private devotee to pleasure into a public one, to become a more general
good, with all the advantages requisite to put my person out to use,
either for interest or pleasure, or both. "But then," she observed, "as
I was a kind of new face upon the town, that is, was an established rule
and myster of trade, for me to pass for a maid and dispose of myself
as such on the first good occasion, without prejudice, however, to such
diversions as I might have a mind to in the interim; for that nobody
could be a greater enemy than she was to the losing of time. That she
would, in the mean time, do her best to find out a proper person, and
would undertake to manage this nice point for me, if I would accept
of her aid and advice to such good purpose, that, in the loss of a
fictitious maidenhead, I should reap all the advantages of a native
one."

As too great a delicacy of sentiments did not extremely belong to my
character at that time, I confess, against myself, that I perhaps too
readily closed with a proposal which my candor and ingenuity gave me
some repugnance to: but not enough to contradict the intention of one to
whom I had now thoroughly abandoned the direction of all my steps. For
Mrs. Cole had, I do not know how unless by one of those unaccountable
invincible sympathies that, nevertheless, from the strongest links,
especially of female friendship, won and got entire possession of me. On
her side, she pretended that a strict resemblance, she fancied she saw
in me, to an only daughter whom she had lost at my age, was the first
motive of her taking to me so affectionately as she did. It might be so:
there exist a slender motives of attachment, that, gathering force from
habit and liking, have proved often more solid and durable than those
founded on much stronger reasons; but this I know, that though I had
no other acquaintance with her, than seeing her at my lodgings, when
I lived with Mr. H..., where she had made errands to sell me some
millinery ware, she had by degrees insinuated herself so far into my
confidence, that I threw myself blindly into her hands, and came,
at length, to regard, love, and obey her implicitly; and, to do her
justice, I never experienced at her hands other than a sincerity of
tenderness, and care for my interest, hardly heard of in those of
her profession. We parted that night, after having settled a perfect
unreserved agreement; and the next morning Mrs. Cole came, and took me
with her to her house for the first time.

Here, at the first sight of things, I found every thing breathe an air
of decency, modesty and order.

In the outer parlour, or rather shop, sat three young women, rather
demurely employed on millinery work, which was the cover of a traffic in
more precious commodities; but three beautifuller creatures could hardly
be seen. Two of them were extremely fair, the eldest not above nineteen;
and the third, much about that age, was a piquant brunette, whose black
sparking eyes, and perfect harmony of features and shape, left her
nothing to envy in her fairer companions. Their dress too had the more
design in it, the less it appeared to have, being in a taste of uniform
correct neatness, and elegant simplicity. These were the girls that
composed the small domestic flock, which my governess trained up with
surprising order and management, considering the giddy wildness of young
girls once got upon the loose. But then she never continued any in her
house, whom, after a due noviciate, she found un-tractable, or unwilling
to comply with the rules of it. Thus she had insensibly formed a little
family of love, in which the members found so sensibly their account,
in a rare alliance of pleasure and interest, and of a necessary outward
decency, with unbounded secret liberty, that Mrs. Cole, who had picked
them as much for their temper as their beauty, governed them with ease
to herself and them too.

To these pupils then of hers, whom she had prepared, she presented me
as a new boarder, and one that was to be immediately admitted to all the
intimacies of the house; upon which these charming girls gave me all the
marks of a welcome reception, and indeed of being perfectly pleased with
my figure, that I could possibly expect from any of my own sex: but they
had been effectually brought to sacrifice all jealousy, or competition
of charms, to a common interest, and considered me a partner that was
bringing no despicable stock of goods into the trade of the house. They
gathered round me, viewed me on all sides; and as my admission into this
joyous troop made a little holiday, the shew of work was laid aside; and
Mrs. Cole giving me up, with special recommendation, to their caresses
and entertainment, went about her ordinary business of the house.

The sameness of our sex, age, profession, and views, soon creased
as unreserved a freedom and intimacy as if we had been for years
acquainted. They took and shewed me the house, their respective
apartments, which were furnished with every article of convenience and
luxury; and above all, a spacious drawing-room, where a select revelling
band usually met, in general parties of pleasure; the girls supping
with their sparks, and acting their wanton pranks with unbounded
licentiousness; whilst a defiance of awe, modesty or jealousy were their
standing rules, by which, according to the principles of their society,
whatever pleasure was lost on the side of sentiment, was abundantly made
up to the senses in the poignancy of variety, and the charms of ease and
luxury. The authors and supporters of this secret institution would, in
the height of their humour, style themselves the restorers of the golden
age and its simplicity of pleasures, before their innocence became so
unjustly branded with the names of guilt and shame.

As soon then as the evening began, and the shew of a shop was shut, the
academy opened; the mask of mock-modesty was completely taken off, and
all the girls delivered over to their respective calls of pleasure
or interest with their men: and none of that sex was promiscuously
admitted, but only such as Mrs. Cole was previously satisfied with their
character and discretion. In short, this was the safest, politest, and,
at the same time, the most thorough house of accommodation in town:
every thing being conducted so, that decency made no intrenchment upon
the most libertine pleasures; in the practice of which, too, the choice
familiars of the house had found the secret so rare and difficult, of
reconciling even all the refinements of taste and delicacy, with the
most gross and determinate gratifications of sensuality.

After having consumed the morning in the dear endearments and
instructions of my new acquaintance, we went to dinner, when Mrs.
Cole, presiding at the head of her club, gave me the first idea of her
management and address, in inspiring these girls with so sensible a
love and respect for her. There was no stiffness, no reserve, no airs of
pique, or little jealousies, but all was unaffectedly gay, cheerful and
easy.

After dinner, Mrs. Cole, seconded by the young ladies, acquainted me
that there was a chapter to be held that night in form, for the ceremony
of my reception into the sisterhood; and in which, with all due reserve
to my maidenhead, that was to be occasionally cooked up for the first
proper chapman. I was to undergo a ceremonial of initiation they were
sure I should not be displeased with.

Embarked as I was, and moreover captivated with the charms of my new
companions, I was too much prejudiced in favour of any proposal they
could make, to as much as hesitate an assent; which, therefore, readily
giving in the style of a carte blanche, I received fresh kisses of
compliment from them all, in approval of my docility and good nature.
Now I was "a sweet girl... I came into things with a good grace... I was
not affectedly coy... I should be the pride of the house," and the like.

This point thus adjusted, the young women left Mrs. Cole to talk and
concert matters with me, when she explained to me, that "I should be
introduced that very evening, to four of her best friends, one of
whom she had, according to the custom of the house, favoured with the
preference of engaging me in the first party of pleasure;" assuring me,
at the same time, "that they were all young gentlemen agreeable in their
persons, and unexceptionable in every respect; that united, and holding
together by the band of common pleasures, they composed the chief
support of her house, and made very liberal presents to the girls that
pleased and humoured them, so that they were, properly speaking, the
founders and patrons of this little seraglio. Not but that she had, at
proper seasons, other customers to deal with, whom she stood less upon
punctilio with, than with these; for instance, it was not on one of them
she could attempt to pass me for a maid; they were not only too knowing,
too much town-bred to bite at such a bait, but they were such generous
benefactors to her, that it would be unpardonable to think of it."

Amidst all the flutter and emotion which this promise of pleasure, for
such I conceived it, stirred up in me, I preserved so much of the woman,
as to feign just reluctance enough to make some merit, of sacrificing it
to the influence of my patroness, whom I likewise, still in character,
reminded of it perhaps being right for me to go home and dress, in
favour of my first impressions.

But Mrs. Cole, in opposition to this, assured me, "that the gentlemen
I should be presented to were, by their rank and taste of things,
infinitely superior to the being touched with any glare of dress or
ornaments, such slick women rather confound and overlay than set off
their beauty with; that these veteran voluptuaries knew better than not
to hold them in the highest contempt: they with whom the pure native
charms alone could pass current, and who would at any time leave a
sallow, washy, painted duchess on her own hands, for a ruddy, healthy
firm fleshed country maid; and as for my part, that nature had
done enough for me, to set me above owing the least favour to art;"
concluding withal, that for the instant occasion, there was no dress
like an undress.

I thought my governess too good a judge of these matters, not to
be easily overruled by her: after which she went on preaching very
pathetically the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance to
all those arbitrary tastes of pleasure, which are by some styled the
refinements, and by others the depravations of it; between whom it was
not the business of a simple girl, who was to profit by pleasing, to
decide, but to conform to. Whilst I was edifying by these wholesome
lessons, tea was brought in, and the young ladies, returning, joined
company with us.

After a great deal of mixed chat, frolic and humour, one of them,
observing that there would be a good deal of time on and before the
assembly hour, proposed that each girl should entertain the company
with that critical period of her personal history, in which she first
exchanged the maiden state for womanhood. The proposal was approved,
with only one restriction of Mrs. Cole, that she, on account of her age,
and I, on account of my titular maidenhead, should be excused, at
least till I had undergone the forms of the house. This obtained me a
dispensation, and the promotress of this amusement was desired to begin.

Her name was Emily; a girl fair to excess, and whose limbs were, if
possible, too well made, since their plump fulness was rather to the
prejudice of that delicate slimness required by the nicer judges of
beauty; her eyes were blue, and streamed inexpressible sweetness, and
nothing could be prettier than her mouth and lips, which closed over a
range of the evenest and whitest teeth. Thus she began:

"Neither my extraction, nor the most critical adventure of my life, is
sublime enough to impeach me of any vanity in the advancement of the
proposal you have approved of. My father and mother were, and for aught
I know, are still, farmers in the country, not above forty miles from
town: their barbarity to me, in favour of a son, on whom alone they
vouchsafed to bestow their tenderness, had a thousand times determined
me to fly their house, and throw myself on the wide world; but, at
length, an accident forced me on this desperate attempt at the age of
fifteen. I had broken a chinabowl, the pride and idol of both their
hearts; and as an unmerciful beating was the least I had to depend on at
their hands, in the silliness of these tender years, I left the house,
and, at all adventures, took the road to London. How my loss was
resented I do not know, for till this instant I have not heard
a syllable about them. My whole stock was two broad pieces of my
godmother's, a few shillings, silver shoe-buckles and a silver thimble.
Thus equipped, with no more clothes than the ordinary ones I had on my
back, and frightened at every foot or noise I heard behind me, I hurried
on; and I dare sweare, walked a dozen miles before I stopped, through
mere weariness and fatigue. At length I sat down on a style, wept
bitterly, and yet was still rather under increased impressions of fear
on the account of my escape; which made me dread, worse than death, the
going back to my unnatural parents. Refreshed by this little repose, and
relieved by my tears, I was proceeding onward, when I was overtaken by a
sturdy country lad, who was going to London to see what he could do for
himself there, and, like me, had given his friends the slip. He could
not be above seventeen, was ruddy, well featured enough, with uncombed
flaxen hair, a little flapped hat, kersey frock, yarn stockings, in
short, a perfect plough boy. I saw him come whistling behind me, with a
bundle tied to the end of a stick, his travelling equipage. We walked by
one another for some time without speaking; at length we joined company,
and agreed to keep together till we got to our journey's end; what his
designs or ideas were, I know not: the innocence of mine I can solemnly
protest.

"As night drew on, it became us to look out for some inn or shelter; to
which perplexity another was added, and that was, what we should say for
ourselves, if we were questioned. After some puzzle, the young fellow
started a proposal, which I thought the finest that could be; and what
was that? why, that we should pass for husband and wife: I never dreamed
of consequences. We came presently, after having agreed on this notable
experience, to one of those hedge accommodations for foot passengers,
at the door of which stood an old crazy beldam, who seeing us trudge by,
invited us to lodge there. Glad of any cover, we went in, and my fellow
traveller, taking all upon him, called for what the house afforded, and
we supped together as man and wife; which, considering our figures and
ages, could not have passed on any one but such as any thing could
pass on. But when bed-time came on, we had neither of us the courage
to contradict our first account of ourselves; and what was extremely
pleasant, the young lad seemed as perplexed as I was how to evade lying
together, which was so natural for the state we had pretended to. Whilst
we were in this quandary, the landlady takes the candles, and lights
us to our apartment, through a long yard, at the end of which it stood,
separate from the body of the house. Thus we suffered ourselves to be
conducted, without saying a word in opposition to it; and there, in a
wretched room, with a bed answerable, we were left to pass the night
together, as a thing quite of course. For my part, I was so incredibly
innocent, as not even to think much more harm of going into bed with the
young man, than with one of our dairy wenches; nor had he, perhaps, any
other notions than those of innocence, till such a fair occasion put
them into his head.

"Before either of us undressed, however, he put out the candle; and the
bitterness of the weather made it a kind of necessity for me to go into
bed: slipping then my clothes off, I crept under the bedclothes, where
I found the young stripling already nestled, and the touch of his warm
flesh rather pleased than alarmed me. I was indeed too much disturbed
with the novelty of my condition to be able to sleep; but then I had
not the least thought of harm. But oh! how powerful are the instincts
of nature! how little is there wanting to set them in action! The young
man, sliding his arm under my body, drew me gently towards him, as if
to keep himself and me warmer; and the heat I felt from joining our
breasts, kindled another that I had hitherto never felt, and was,
even then, a stranger to the nature of. Emboldened, I suppose, by my
easiness, he ventured to kiss me, and I insensibly returned it; without
knowing the consequence of returning it: for, on this encouragement, he
slipped his hand all down from my breast to that part of me where the
sense of feeling is so exquisitely critical, as I then experienced by
its instant taking fire upon the touch, and glowing with a strange
tickling heat: there he pleased himself and me, by feeling, till growing
a little too bold with me, he hurt me, and made me complain. Then he
took my hand, which he guided, not unwillingly on my side, between the
twist of his closed thighs, which were extremely warm; there he lodged
and pressed it, till raising it by degrees, he made me feel the proud
distinction of his sex from mine. I was frightened at the novelty,
and drew back my hand; yet, pressed and spurred on by sensations of a
strange pleasure, I could not help asking him what that was for? He
told me he would shew me if I would let him; and without waiting for
my answer, which he prevented by stopping my mouth with kisses I was
far from disrelishing, he got upon me, and inserting one of his thighs
between mine, opened them so as to make way for himself, and fixed me to
his purpose; whilst I was so much out of my usual sense, so subdued
by the present power of a new one, that, between far and desire, I lay
utter passive, till the piercing pain rouzed and made me cry out. But
it was too late: he was too firm fixed in the saddle for me to compass
flinging him, with all the struggles I could use, some of which only
served to further his point, and at length an irresistible thrust
murdered at once my maidenhead, and almost me. I now lay a bleeding
witness of the necessity imposed on our sex, to gather the first honey
off the thorns.

"But the pleasure rising as the pain subsided, I was soon reconciled to
fresh trials, and before morning, nothing on earth could be dearer to me
than this rifler of my virgin sweets: he was every thing to me now.

"How we agreed to join fortunes: how we came up to town together, where
we lived some time, till necessity-parted us, and drove me into this
course of life, to which I had been long ago bettered and torn to pieces
before I came to this age, as much through my easiness, as through
inclination, had it not been for my finding refuge in this house: these
are all circumstances which pass the mark I proposed, so that here my
narrative ends."

In the order of our sitting, it was Harriet's turn to go on. Amongst
all the beauties of our sex, that I had before, or have since seen, few
indeed were the forms that could dispute excellence with her's; it was
not delicate, but delicacy itself incarnate, such was the symmetry of
her small but exactly fashioned limbs. Her complexion, fair as it
was, appeared yet more fair, from the effect of two black eyes, the
brilliancy of which gave her face more vivacity than belonged to the
colour of it, which was only defended from paleness, by a sweetly
pleasing blush in her cheeks, that grew fainter and fainter, till at
length it died away insensibly into the overbearing white. Then her
miniature features joined to finish the extreme sweetness of it, which
was not belied by that of a temper turned to indolence, languor, and
the pleasures of love. Pressed to subscribe her contingent, she smiled,
blushed a little, and thus complied with our desires:

"My father was neither better nor worse than a miller near the city of
York; and both he and my mother dying whilst I was an infant, I fell
under the care of a widow and childless aunt, housekeeper to my lord
N..., at his seat in the county of..., where she brought me up with all
imaginable tenderness. I was not seventeen, as I am not now eighteen,
before I had, on account of my person purely (for fortune I had
notoriously none), several advantageous proposals; but whether nature
was slow in making me sensible in her favourite passion, or that I had
not seen any of the other sex who had stirred up the least emotion
or curiosity to be better acquainted with it, I had, till that age,
preserved a perfect innocence, even of thought: whilst my fears of I
did not now well know what, made me no more desirous of marrying than of
dying. My aunt, good woman, favoured my timorousness, which she loooked
on as childish affection, that her own experience might probably assure
her would wear off in time, and gave my suitors proper answers for me.

"The family had not been down at that seat for years, so that it was
neglected, and committed entirely to my aunt, and two old domestics to
take care of it. Thus I had the full range of a spacious lonely house
and gardens, situated at about half a mile distance from any other
habitation, except, perhaps, a straggling cottage or so.

"Here, in tranquillity and innocence, I grew up without any memorable
accident, till one fatal day I had, as I had often done before, left my
aunt asleep, and secure for some hours, after dinner; and resorting to a
kind of ancient summer house, at some distance from the house, I carried
my work with me, and sat over a rivulet, which its door and window faced
upon. Here I fell into a gentle breathing slumber, which stole upon my
senses, as they fainted under the excessive heat of the season at
that hour; a cane couch, with my work basked for a pillow, were all the
conveniences of my short repose; for I was soon awaked and alarmed by a
flounce, and noise of splashing in the water. I got up to see what was
the matter; and what indeed should it be but the son of a neighbouring
gentleman, as I afterwards found (for I had never seen him before),
who had strayed that way with his gun, and heated by his sport, and the
sultriness of the day, had been tempted by the freshness of the clear
stream; so that presently stripping, he jumped into it on the other
side, which bordered on a wood, some trees whereof, inclined down to the
water, formed a pleasing shady recess, commodious to undress and leave
his clothes under.

"My first emotions at the sight of this youth, naked in the water, were,
with all imaginable respect to truth, those of surprise and fear;
and, in course, I should immediately have run out, had not my modesty,
fatally for itself, interposed the objection of the door and window
being so situated, that it was scarce possible to get out, and make my
way along the bank to the house, without his seeing me: which I could
not bear the thought of, so much ashamed and confounded was I at having
seen him. Condemned then to stay till his departure should release me,
I was greatly embarrassed how to dispose of myself: I kept some time
betwixt terror and modesty, even from looking through the window, which
being an old fashioned casement, without any light behind me, could
hardly betray any one's being there to him from within; then the door
was so secure, that without violence, or my own consent, there was no
opening it from without.

"But now, by my own experience, I found it too true, that objects which
affright us, when we cannot get from them, draw our eyes as forcibly as
those that please us. I could not long withstand that nameless impulse,
which, without any desire of this novel sight, compelled me towards
it; emboldened too by my certainty of being at once unseen and safe,
I ventured by degrees to cast my eyes on an object so terrible and
alarming to my virgin modesty as a naked man.

"But as I snatched a look, the first gleam that struck me, was in general
the dewy lustre of the whitest skin imaginable, which the sun playing
upon made the reflection of it perfectly beamy. His face, in the
confusion I was in, I could not well distinguish the lineamints of, any
farther than that there was a great deal of youth and freshness in it.
The frolic and various play of all his fine polished limbs, as they
appeared above the surface, in the course of his swimming or wantoning
with the water, amused and insensibly delighted me; sometimes he lay
motionless, on his back, waterborne, and dragging after him a fine head
of hair, that, floating, swept the stream in a bush of black curls. Then
the overflowing water would make a separation between his breast and
glossy white belly; at the bottom of which I could not escape observing
so remarkable a distinction, as a black mossy tuft, out of which
appeared to emerge a round, softish, limber, white something, that
played every way, with ever the least motion or whirling eddy. I cannot
say but that part chiefly, by a kind of natural instinct, attracted,
detained, captivated my attention: it was out of the power of all my
modesty to command my eye away from it; and seeing nothing so very
dreadful in its appearance, I insensibly looked away all my fears: but
as fast as they gave way, new desires and strange wishes took place, and
I melted as I gazed. The fire of nature, that had so long lain dormant
or concealed, began to break out, and made me feel my sex for the first
time. He had now changed his posture, and swam prone on his belly,
striking out with his legs and arms; finer modeled than which could
not have been cast, whilst his floating locks played over a neck and
shoulders whose whiteness they delightfully set off. Then the luxuriant
swell of flesh that rose from the small of his back, and terminates its
double cope at where the thighs are set off, perfectly dazzled one with
its watery glistening gloss.

"By this time I was so affected by this inward involution of sentiments,
so softened by this sight, that now, betrayed into a sudden transition
from extreme fears to extreme desires, I found these last so strong upon
me, the heat of the weather too perhaps conspiring to exalt their
rage, that nature almost fainted under them. Not that I so much as knew
precisely what was wanting to me: my only thought was, that so sweet
a creature, as this youth seemed to me, could only make me happy; but
then, the little likelihood there was of compassing an acquaintance with
him, or perhaps of ever seeing him again, dashed my desires, and turned
them into torments. I was still gazing, with all the powers of my sight,
on this bewitching object, when, in an instant, down he went. I had
heard of such things as a cramp seizing on even the best swimmers, and
occasioning their being drowned; and imagining this so sudden eclipse
to be owing to it, the inconceivable fondness this unknown lad had given
birth to, distracted me with the most killing terrors; insomuch, that my
concern giving the wings, I flew to the door, opened it, ran down to
the canal, guided thither by the madness of my fears for him, and the
intense desire of being an instrument to save him, though I was ignorant
how, or by what means to effect it: but was it for fears, and a passion
so sudden as mine, to reason! All this took up scarce the space of a few
moments. I had then just life enough to reach the green borders of the
waterpiece, where wildly looking round for the young man, and missing
him still, my fright and concern sunk me down in a deep swoon, which
must have lasted me some time; for I did not come to myself, till I was
roused out of it by a sense of pain that pierced me to the vitals, and
awaked me to the the most surprising circumstance of finding myself not
only in the arms of this very young gentleman I had been so solicitous
to save; but taken at such an advantage in my unresisting condition,
that he had actually completed his entrance into me so far, that
weakened as I was by all the preceding conflicts of mind I had suffered,
and struck dumb by the violence of my surprise, I had neither the power
to cry out, nor the strength to disengage myself from his strenuous
embraces, before, urging his point, he had forced his way and completely
triumphed over my virginity, as he might now as well see by the
streams of blood that followed his drawing out, as he had felt by the
difficulties he had met with consummating his penetration. But the
sight of the blood, and the sense of my condition, had (as he told me
afterwards), since the ungovernable rage of his passion was somewhat
appeased, now wrought so far on him, that at all risks, even of the
worst consequences, he could not find in his heart to leave me, and make
off, which he might easily have done. I still lay all discomposed
in bleeding ruin, palpitating, speechless, unable to get off, and
frightened, and fluttering like a poor wounded partridge, and ready
to faint away again at the sense of what had befallen me. The young
gentleman was by me, kneeling, kissing my hand, and with tears in his
eyes, beseeching me to forgive him, and offering all the reparation in
his power. It is certain that could I, at the instant of regaining my
senses, have called out, or taken the bloodiest revenge, I would not
be stuck at it; the violation was attended too with such aggravating
circumstances, though he was ignorant of them, since it was to my
concern for the preservation of his life, that I owed my ruin.

"But how quick is the shift of passions from one extreme to another! and
how little are they acquainted with the human heart who dispute it! I
could not see this amiable criminal, so suddenly the first object of my
love, and as suddenly of my just hate, on his knees, bedewing my hands
with his tears, without relenting. He was still stark-naked, but my
modesty had been already too much wounded, in essentials, to be so much
shocked as I should have otherwise been with appearances only; in short,
my anger ebbed so fast, and the tide of love returned so strong upon
me, that I felt it a point of my own happiness to forgive him. The
reproaches I made him were murmured in so soft a tone, my eyes met his
with such glances, expressing more languor than resentment, that he
could not but presume his forgiveness was at no desperate distance; but
still he would not quit his posture of submission, till I had
pronounced his pardon in form; which after the most fervent entreaties,
protestations, and promises, I had not the power to withhold. On which,
with the utmost marks of a fear of again offending, he ventured to
kiss my lips, which I neither declined nor resented: but on my mild
expostulation with him upon the barbarity of his treatment, he explained
the mystery of my ruin, if not entirely to the clearance, at least much
to the alleviation of his guilt, in the eyes of a judge so partial in
his favour as I was grown.

"It seems that the circumstance of his going down, or sinking, which
in my extreme ignorance I had mistaken for something very fatal, was no
other than a trick of diving, which I had not ever heard, or at least
attended o, the mention of: and he was so long-breathed at it, that in
the few moments in which I ran out to save him, he had not yet emerged,
before I fell into the swoon, in which, as he rose, seeing me extended
on the bank, his first idea was, that some young woman was upon some
design of frolic or diversion with him, for he knew I could not have
fallen asleep there without his having seen me before: agreebly to which
notion he had ventured to approach, and finding me without sign of life,
and still perplexed as he was what to think of the adventure, he took
me in his arms at all hazards, and carried me into the summer-house, of
which he observed the door open: there he laid me down on the couch, and
tried, as he protested in good faith, by several means to bring me to
myself again, till fired, as he said, beyond all bearing by the sight
and touch of several parts of me, which were unguardedly exposed to him,
he could no longer govern his passion; and the less, as he was not quite
sure that his first idea of this swoon being a feint, was not the very
truth of the case; seduced then by this flattering notion, and overcome
by the present, as he styled them, super-human temptations, combined
with the solitude and seeming security of the attempt, he was not enough
his own master not to make it. Leaving me then just only whilst he
fastened the door, he returned with redoubled eagerness to his prey:
when, finding me still entranced, he ventured to place me as he pleased,
whilst I felt, no more than the dead, what he was about, till the pain
he put me to roused me just in time enough to be witness of a triumph I
was not able to defeat, and now scarce regretted: for as he talked,
the tone of his voice sounded, methought, so sweetly in my ears, the
sensible nearness of so new and interesting an object to me, wrought so
powerfully upon me, that, in the rising perception of things in a new
and pleasing light, I lost all sense of the past injury. The young
gentleman soon discerned the symptoms of a reconciliation in my softened
looks, and hastening to receive the seal of it from my lips, pressed
them tenderly to pass his pardon in the return of a kiss so melting
fiery, that the impression of it being carried to my heart, and thence
to my new discovered sphere of Venus, I was melted into a softness
that could refuse him nothing. When now he managed his caresses and
endearments so artfully, as to insinuate the most soothing consolations
for the past pain and the most pleasing expectations of future pleasure,
but whilst mere modesty kept my eyes from seeing his and rather declined
them, I had a glimpse of that instrument of mischief which was now,
obviously even to me, who had scarce had snatches of a comparative
observation of it, resuming its capacity to renew it, and grew greatly
alarming with its increase of size, as he bore it no doubt designedly,
hard and stiff against one of my hands carelessly dropt; but then he
employed such tender prefacing, such winning progressions, that my
returning passion of desire being now so strongly prompted by the
engaging circumstances of the sight and incendiary touch of his
naked glowing beauties, I yield at length at the force of the present
impressions, and he obtained of my tacit blushing consent all the
gratifications of pleasure left in the power of my poor person to
bestow, after he had cropt its richest flower, during my suspension of
life, and abilities to guard it. Here, according to the rule laid down,
I should stop; but I am so much in notion, that I could not if I would.
I shall only add, however, that I got home without the least discovery,
or suspicion of what had happened. I met my young ravisher several times
after, whom I now passionately loved and who, though not of age to
claim a small but independent fortune, would have married me; but as the
accident that prevented it, and its consequences, which threw me on the
public, contain matters too moving and serious to introduce at present,
I cut short here."

Louisa, the brunette whom I mentioned at first, now took her turn to
treat the company with her history. I have already hinted to you the
graces of her person, than which nothing could be more exquisitely
touching; I repeat touching, as a just distinction from striking, which
is ever a less lasting effect, and more generally belongs to the fair
complexions; but leaving that decision to every one's taste, I proceed
to give you Louisa's narrative as follows:

"According to practical maxims of life, I ought to boast of my birth,
since I owe it to pure love, without marriage; but this I know, it was
scarce possible to inherit a stronger propensity to that cause of my
being than I did. I was the rare production of the first essay of a
journeyman cabinet-maker, on his master's maid: the consequence of which
was a big belly, and the loss of a place. He was not in circumstances to
do much for her; and yet, after all this blemish, she found means, after
she had dropt her burthen, and disposed of me to a poor relation in
the country, to repair it by marrying a pastry-cook here in London,
in thriving business; on whom she soon, under favour of the complete
ascendant he had given her over him, passed me for a child she had by
her first husband. I had, on that footing, been taken home, and was
not six years old when this father-in-law died, and left my mother
in tolerable circumstances, and without any children by him. As to my
natural father, he had betaken himself to the sea; where, when the truth
of things came out, I was told that he died, not immensely rich you may
think, since he was no more than a common sailor. As I grew up, under
the eyes of my mother, who kept on the business, I could not but see,
in her severe watchfulness, the marks of a slip, which she did not
care should be hereditary; but we no more choose our passions than
our features or complexions, and the bent of mine was so strong to the
forbidden pleasure, that it got the better, at length, of all her care
and precaution. I was scarce twelve years old, before that part
which she wanted so much to keep out of harm's way, made me feel its
impatience to be taken notice of, and come into play; already had it
put forth the signs of forwardness in the sprout of a soft down over it,
which had often fluttered, and I might also say, grown under my constant
touch and visitation, so pleased was I with what I took to be a kind
of title to womanhood, that state I pined to be entered of, for the
pleasures I conceived were annexed to it; and now the growing importance
of that part to me, and the new sensations in it, demolished at once all
my girlish play-things and amusements. Nature now pointed me strongly
to more solid diversions, while all the stings of desire settled so
fiercely in that little centre of them, that I could not mistake the
spot I wanted a playfellow in.

"I now shunned all company in which there was no hopes of coming at
the object of my longings, and used to shut myself up, to indulge in
solitude some tender meditation on the pleasure I strongly perceived the
overture of, in feeling and examining what nature assured me must be the
chosen avenue, the gates for unknown bliss to enter at, that I panted
after.

"But these meditations only increased my disorder, and blew the fire
that consumed me. I was yet worse when, yielding at length to the
insupportable irritations of the little fairy charm that tormented me,
I seized it with my fingers, teazing it to no end. Sometimes, in the
furious excitations of desire, I threw myself on the bed, spread my
thighs abroad, and lay as it were expecting the longed-for relief, till
finding my illusion, I shut and squeezed them together again, burning
and fretting. In short, this develish thing, with its impetuous girds
and itching fires, led me such a life, that I could neither, night or
day, be at peace with it or myself. In time, however, I thought I had
gained a prodigious prize, when figuring to myself that my fingers were
something of the shape of what I pined for, I worked my way in with one
of them with great agitation and delight; yet not without pain too did I
deflower myself as far as it could reach; proceeding with such a fury of
passion, in this solitary and last shift of pleasure, as extended me at
length breathless on the bed in an amorous melting trance.

"But frequency of use dulling the sensation, I soon began to perceive
that this work was but a paultry shallow expedient, that went but a
little way to relieve me, and rather raised more flame than its dry and
insignificant titillation could rightly appease.

"Man alone, I almost instinctively knew, as well as by what I had
industriously picked up at weddings and christenings, was possessed of
the only remedy that could reduce this rebellious disorder; but watched
and overlooked as I was, how to come at it was the point, and that, to
all appearance, an invincible one; not that I did not rack my brains and
invention how at once to elude my mothers vigilance, and procure myself
the satisfaction of my impetuous curiosity and longings for this mighty
and untasted pleasure. At length, however, a singular chance did at once
the work of a long course of alertness. One day that we had dined at
an acquaintance over the way, together with a gentlewoman-lodger that
occupied the first floor of our house, there started an indispensable
necessity for my mother's going down to Greenwich to accompany her: the
party was settled, when I do not know what genius whispered me to plead
a headache, which I certainly had not, against my being included in a
jaunt that I had not the least relish for. The pretext, however, passed,
and my mother, with much reluctance, prevailed with herself to go
without me; but took particular care to see me safe home, where she
consigned me into the hands of an old trusty maidservants, who served in
the shop, for we had not a male creature in the house.

"As soon as she was gone, I told the maid I would go up and lie down on
our lodger's bed, mine not being made, with a charge to her at the same
time not to disturb me, as it was only rest I wanted. This injunction
probably proved of eminent service to me. As soon as I was got into the
bedchamber, I unlaced my stays, and threw myself on the outside of the
bedclothes, in all the loosest undress. Here I gave myself up to the old
insipid privy shifts of my self-viewing, self-touching self-enjoying,
in fine, to all the means of self knowledge I could devise, in search
of the pleasure that fled before me, and tantalized with that unknown
something that was out of my reach; thus all only served to enflame
myself, and to provoke violently my desires, whilst the one thing
needful to their satisfaction was not at hand, and I could have bit my
finger for representing it so ill. After then wearying and fatiguing
myself with grasping shadows, whilst that most sensible part of me
disdained to content itself with less than realities, the strong
yearnings, the urgent struggles of nature towards the melting relief,
and the extreme self-agitations I had used to come at it, had wearied
and thrown me into a kind of unquiet sleep: for, if I tossed and threw
about my limbs in proportion to the distraction of my dreams, as I had
reason to believe I did, a bystander could not have helped seeing all
for love. And one there was it seems; for waking out of my very short
slumber, I found my hand locked in that of a young man, who was.
kneeling at my bed-side, and begging my pardon for his boldness: but
that being a son to the lady to whom, this bed-chamber, he knew,
belonged, he had slipped by the servant of the shop, as he supposed,
unperceived, when finding me asleep, his first ideas were to withdraw;
but that he had been fixed and detained there by a power he could better
account for, than resist.

"What shall I say? my emotions of fear and surprise were instantly
subdued by those of the pleasure I bespoke in great presence of mind
from the turn this adventure might take. He seemed to me no other than a
pitying angel, dropt out of the clouds: for he was young and perfectly
handsome, which was more than even I had asked for, man, in general,
being all that my utmost desires had pointed at. I thought then I could
not put too much encouragement into my eyes and voice; I regretted no
leading advances; no matter for his after-opinion of my forwardness,
so it might bring him to the point of answering my pressing demands of
present case; it was not now with his thoughts but his actions that my
business immediately lay. I raised then my head, and told him, in a soft
tone, that tended to prescribe the same key to him, that his mamma was
gone out and would not return till late at night: which I thought no
bad hint; but as it proved, I had nothing of a novice to deal with. The
impressions I had made on him from the discoveries I had betrayed of my
person in the disordered motions of it, during his view of me asleep,
had, as he afterwards told me, so fixed and charmingly prepared
him, that, had I known his dispositions, I had more to hope from his
violence, than to fear from his respect; and even less than the extreme
tenderness which I threw into my voice and eyes, would have served to
encourage him to make the most of the opportunity. Finding then that his
kisses, imprinted on my hand, were taken as tamely as he could wish,
he rose to my lips; and glewing his to them, made me so faint with
overcoming joy and pleasure, that I fell back, and he with me, in
course, on the bed, upon which I had, by insensibly shifting from the
side to near the middle, invitingly, made room for him. He is now lain
down by me, and the minutes being too precious to consume in ultimate
ceremony, or dalliance, my youth proceeds immediately to those
extremities, which all my looks, humming and palpitations, had assured
him he might attempt without the fear of a repulse: those rogues the
men, read us admirably on these occasions. I lay then at length panting
for the imminent attack, with wishes far beyond my fears, and for which
it was scarce possible for a girl, barely thirteen, but tall and well
grown, to have better dispositions. He threw up my petticoat and shift,
whilst my thighs were, by an instinct of nature, unfolded to their best;
and my desires had so thoroughly destroyed all modesty in me, that even
their being now naked and all laid open to him, was part of the prelude
that pleasure deepened my blushes at, more than same. But when his hand,
and touches, naturally attracted to their center, made me feel all their
wantonness and warmth in, and round it, oh! how immensely different a
sense of things, did I perceive there, than when under my own insipid
handling! And now his waistcoat was unbuttoned, and the confinement
of the breeches burst through, when out started to view the amazing,
pleasing object of all my wishes, all my dreams, all my love, the king
member indeed! I gazed at, I devoured it, at length and breadth, with
my eyes intently directed to it, till his; getting upon me, and placing
between my thighs, took from me the enjoyment of its sight, to give me a
far more grateful one, in its touch, in that part where its touch is so
exquisitely affecting. Applying it then to the minute opening, for such
at that age it certainly was, I met with too much good will, I felt with
too great a rapture of pleasure the first insertion of it, to heed much
the pain that followed: I thought nothing too dear to pay for this the
richest treat of the sense; so that, split up, torn, bleeding, mangled
I was still superiorly pleased, and hugged the author of all this
delicious ruin. But when, soon after, he made his second attack, sore as
every thing was, the smart was soon put away by the sovereign cordial;
all my soft complainings were silenced, and the pain melting fast away
into pleasure. I abandoned myself over to all its transports, and gave
it the full possession of my whole body and soul; for now all thought
was at an end with me; I lived in what I felt only. And who could
describe those feelings, those agitations, yet exalted by the charm of
their novelty and surprise? when that part of me which had so hungered
for the dear morsel that now so delightfully crammed, forced all my
vital sensations to fix their home there, during the stay of my beloved
guest; who too soon paid me for his hearty welcome, in a dissolvent,
richer far than that I have heard of some queen treating her paramour
with, in liquified pearl, and ravishingly poured into me, where, now
myself too much melted to give it a dry reception, I hailed it with the
warmest confluence on my side, amidst all those ecstatic raptures, not
unfamiliar I presume to this good company. Thus, however, I arrived at
the very top of all my wishes, by an accident unexpected indeed, but
not so wonderful; for this young gentleman was just arrived in town from
college, and came familiarly to his mother at her apartment, where he
had once before been, though, by mere chance. I had not seen him: so
that we knew one another by hearing only; and finding me stretched on
his mother's bed, he readily concluded from her description, who it was.
The rest you know.

"This affair had however no ruinous consequences, the young gentleman
escaping then, and many more times undiscovered. But the warmth of my
constitution, that made the pleasures of love a kind of necessary of
life to me, having betrayed me into indiscretions fatal to my private
fortune, I fell at length to the public; from which, it is probable, I
might have met with the worst of ruin, if my better fate had not thrown
me into this safe and agreeable refuge."

Here Louisa ended; and these little histories having brought the time
for the girls to retire, and to prepare for the revels of the evening, I
staid with Mrs. Cole, till Emily came, and told us the company was met,
and waited for us.

Mrs. Cole on this, taking me by the hand, with a smile of encouragement,
led me up stairs, preceded by Louisa, who was come to hasten us, and
lighted us with two candles, one in each hand.

On the landing-place of the first pair of stairs, we were met by a young
gentleman, extremely well dressed, and a very pretty figure, to whom I
was to be indebted for the first essay of the pleasures of the house.
He saluted me with great gallantry, and handed me into the drawing room,
the floor of which was overspread with a Turkey carpet, and all its
furniture voluptuously adapted to every demand of the most studied
luxury; now too it was, by means of a profuse illumination, enlivened
by a light scarce inferior, and perhaps more favourable to joy, more
tenderly pleasing, than that of broad sunshine.

On my entrance into the room, I had the satisfaction! to hear a buzz of
approbation run through the whole company, which now consisted of four
gentlemen, including my particular (this was the cant term of the
house for one's gallant for the time), the three young-women, in a
neat flowing dishabille, the mistress of the academy, and myself. I was
welcomed and saluted by a kiss all round, in which, however, it was easy
to-discover, in the superior warmth of that of the men, the distinction
of the sexes.

Awed, and confounded as I was, at seeing myself surrounded, caressed,
and made court to by so many strangers, I could not immediately
familiarize myself to all that air of gaiety and joy, which dictated
their compliments, and animated their caresses.

They assured me that I was so perfectly to their taste, as to have but
one fault against me, which I might easily be cured of, and that was
my modesty: this, they observed, might pass for a beauty the more with
those who wanted it for a heigh tener; but their maxim was, that it was
an impertinent mixture, and dashed the cup so as to spoil the sincere
draught of pleasure; they considered it accordingly as their mortal
enemy, and gave it no quarter wherever they met with it. This was a
prologue not unworthy of the revels that ensued.

In the midst of all the frolic and wantonness, which this joyous band
had presently, and all naturally, run into, an elegant supper was served
in, and we sat down to it, my spark elect placing himself next to me,
and the other couples without order or ceremony. The delicate cheer and
good wine soon banished all reserve; the conversation grew as lively as
could be wished, without taking too loose a turn: these professors of
pleasure knew too well, how to stale impressions of it, or evaporate
the imagination of words, before the time of action. Kisses however were
snatched at times, or where a handkerchief round the neck interposed
its feeble barrier, it was not extremely respected: the hands of the men
went to work with their usual petulance, till the provocation on both
sides rose to such a pitch, that my particulars's proposal for beginning
the country dances was received with instant assent: for, as he
laughingly added, he fancied the instruments were in tune. This was a
signal for preparation, that the complaisant Mrs. Cole, who understood
life, took for her cue of disappearing; no longer so fit for personal
service herself, and content with having settled the order of battle,
she left us the field, to fight it out at discretion.

As soon as she was gone, the table was removed from the middle, and
became a side-board; a couch was brought into its place, of which when I
whisperingly inquired the reason, of my particular, he told me, "that
as it was chiefly on my account that his convention was met, the parties
intended at once to humour their taste of variety in pleasures, and by
an open public enjoyment, to see me broke of any taint of reserve or
modesty, which they looked on as the poison of joy; that though they
occasionally preached pleasure, and lived up to the text, they did not
enthusiastically set up for missionaries, and only indulged themselves
in the delights of a practical instruction of all the pretty women they
liked well enough to bestow it upon, and who fell properly in the way of
it; but that as such a proposal might be too violent, too shocking for a
young beginner, the old standers were to set an example, which he hoped
I would not be averse to follow, since it was to him I was devolved in
favour of the first experiment; but that still I was perfectly at my
liberty to refuse the party, which being in its nature one of pleasure,
supposed an exclusion of all force or constraint."

My countenance expressed, no doubt, my surprise as my silence did my
acquiescence. I was now embarked, and thoroughly determined on any
voyage the company would take me on.

The first that stood up, to open the ball, were a cornet of horse, and
that sweetest of olive-beauties, the soft and amorous Louisa. He led her
to the couch (nothing loth), on which he gave her the fall, and extended
her at length with an air of roughness and vigour, relishing high of
amorous eagerness and impatience. The girl, spreading herself to the
best advantage, with her head upon the pillow, was so concentered in
that she was about, that our presence was the least of her care and
concern. Her petticoats, thrown up with her shift, discovered to the
company the finest turned legs and thighs that could be imagined, and
in broad display, that gave us a full view of that delicious cleft of
flesh, into which the pleasing hair, grown mount over it, parted and
presented a most inviting entrance, between two close hedges, delicately
soft and pouting. Her gallant was now ready, having disencumbered
himself from his clothes, overloaded with lace, and presently, his shirt
removed, shewed us his forces at high plight, bandied and ready for
action. But giving us no time to consider the dimensions, he threw
himself instantly over his charming antagonist who received him as he
pushed at once dead at mark, like a heroine, without flinching; for
surely never was girl constitutionally truer to the taste of joy, or
sincerer in the expressions of its sensations, than she was: we
could observe pleasure lighten in her eyes, as he introduced his
plenipotentiary instrument into her; till, at length, having indulged
her to its utmost reach, its irritations grew so violent, and gave her
the spurs so furiously, that collected within herself, and lost to every
thing but the enjoyment of her favourite feelings, she retarded his
thrusts with a just concert of spring heaves, keeping time so exactly
with the most pathetic sighs, that one might have numbered the strokes
in agitation by their distinct murmurs, whilst her active limbs kept
wreathing and intertwisting with his, in convulsive folds: then the
turtle-billing kisses, and the poignant painless lovebites, which they
both exchanged, in a rage of delight, all conspiring towards the
melting period. It soon came on, when Louisa, in the ravings of her
pleasure-frensy, impotent of all restraint, cried out: "Oh Sir!... Good
Sir! pray do not spare me! ah! ah!..." All her accents now faultering
into heart-fetched sighs, she closed her eyes in the sweet death, in
the instant of which we could easily see the signs in the quiet, dying,
languid posture of her late so furious driver, who was stopped of a
sudden, breathing short, panting, and, for that time, giving up the
spirit of pleasure. As soon as he was dismounted, Louisa sprung up,
shook her petticoats, and running up to me, gave me a kiss, and drew me
to the side-board, to which she was herself handed by her gallant, where
they made me pledge them in a glass of wine, and toast a droll health of
Louisa's proposal in high frolic.

By this time the second couple was ready to enter the lists: which were
a young baronet, and that delicatest of charmers, the winning, tender
Harriet. My gentle esquire came to acquaint me with it, and brought me
back to the scene of action.

And, surely, never did one of her profession accompany her dispositions,
for the barefaced part she was engaged to play, with such a peculiar
grace of sweetness, modesty and yielding coyness, as she did. All her
air and motions breathed only unreserved, unlimited complaisance without
the least mixture of impudence, or prostitution. But what was yet more
surprising, her spark elect, in the midst of the dissolution of a public
open enjoyment, doated on her to distraction, and had, by dint of love
and sentiments, touched her heart, though for a while the restraint
of their engagement to the house laid him under a kind of necessity of
complying with an institution which himself had had the greatest share
establishing.

Harriet was then led to the vacant couch by her gallant, blushing as
she looked at me, and with eyes made to justify any thing, tenderly
bespeaking of me the most favourable construction of the step she was
thus irresistibly drawn into.

Her lover, for such he was, sat her down at the foot of the couch, and
passing his arm round her neck, preluded with a kiss fervently applied
to her lips, that visibly gave her life and spirit to go through with
the scene; and as he kissed, he gently inclined her head, till it fell
back on a pillow disposed to receive it, and leaning himself down all
the way with her, at once countenanced and endeared her fall to her.
There, as if he had guessed our wishes, or meant to gratify at once his
pleasure and his pride, in being the master, by the title of present
possession, of beauties delicate beyond imagination, he discovered her
breast to his own touch, and our common view; but oh! what delicious
manual of love devotion; how inimitable fine moulded! small, round,
firm, and excellently white; then the grain of their skin, so soothing,
so flattering to the touch! and of beauty. When he had feasted his eyes
with the their nipples, that crowned them, the sweetest buds touch and
perusal, feasted his lips with kisses of the highest relish, imprinted
on those all delicious twin-orbs, he proceeded downwards.

Her legs still kept the ground; and now, with the tenderest attention
not to shock or alarm her too suddenly, he, by degrees, rather stole
than rolled up her petticoats; at which, as if a signal had been given,
Louisa and Emily took hold of her legs, in pure wantonness, and, in ease
to her, kept them stretched wide abroad. Then lay exposed, or, to speak
more properly, displayed the greatest parade in nature of female charms.
The whole company, who, except myself, had often seen them, seemed as
much dazzled, surprised and delighted, as any one could be who had now
beheld them for the first time. Beauties so excessive could not but
enjoy the privileges of eternal novelty. Her thighs were so exquisitely
fashioned, that either more in, or more out of flesh than they were,
they would have declined from that point of perfection they presented.
But what infinitely enriched and adorned them, was the sweet
intersection formed, where they met, at the bottom of the smoothest,
roundest, whitest belly, by that central furrow which nature had sunk
there, between the soft relievo of two pouting ridges, and which, in
this girl, was in perfect symmetry of delicacy and miniature with the
rest of her frame. No! nothing in nature could be of a beautifuller cut;
then, the dark umbrage of the downy spring moss that over-arched it,
bestowed, on the luxury of the landscape, a touching warmth, a tender
finishing, beyond the expression of words, or even the paint of thought.

Her truly enamoured gallant, who had stood absorbed and engrossed by the
pleasure of the sight long enough to afford us time to feast ours (no
fear of glutting!) addressed himself at length to the materials of
enjoyment, and lifting the linen veil that hung between us and his
master member of the revels, exhibited one whose eminent size proclaimed
the owner a true woman's hero. He was, besides in every other respect,
an accomplished gentleman, and in the bloom and vigour of youth.
Standing then between Harriet's legs, which were supported by her two
companions at their widest extension, with one hand he gently disclosed
the lips of that luscious mouth of nature, whilst with the other, he
stooped his mighty machine to its lure, from the height of his stiff
stand-up towards his belly; the lips, kept open by his fingers, received
its broad shelving head of coral hue: and when he had nestled it in, he
hovered there a little, and the girls then delivered over to his hips
the agreeable office of supporting her thighs; and now, as if he meant
to spin out his pleasure, and give it the more play for its life, he
passed up his instrument so slow that we lost sight of it inch by inch,
till at length it was wholly taken into the soft laboratory of love, and
the mossy mounts of each fairly met together. In the mean time, we could
plainly mark the prodigious effect the progressions of this delightful
energy wrought in this delicious girl, gradually heightening her beauty
as they heightened her pleasure. Her countenance and whole frame grew
more animated; the faint blush of her cheeks, gaining ground on the
white, deepened into a florid vivid vermillion glow, her naturally
brilliant eyes now sparkled with ten-fold lustre; her languor was
vanished, and she appeared quick, spirited and alive all over. He had
now fixed, nailed, this tender creature, with his home-driven wedge,
so that she lay passive by force, and unable to stir, till beginning
to play a strain of arms against this vein of delicacy, as he urged the
to-and-fro con-friction, he awakened, roused, and touched her so to the
heart, that unable to contain herself, she could not but reply to his
motions, as briskly as her nicety of frame would admit of, till the
raging stings of the pleasure rising towards the point, made her wild
with the intolerable sensations of it, and she now threw her legs and
arms about at random, as she lay lost in the sweet transport; which on
his side declared itself by quicker, eager thrusts, convulsive gasps,
burning sighs, swift laborious breathing, eyes darting humid fires: all
faithful tokens of the imminent approaches of the last gasp of joy.
It came on at length: the baronet led the extasy, which she critically
joined in, as she felt the melting symptoms from him, in the nick of
which, gluing more ardently than ever his lips to hers, he shewed all
the signs of that agony of bliss being strong upon him, in which he gave
her the finishing titillation; inly thrilled with which, we saw plainly
that she answered it down with all effusion of spirit and matter she was
mistress of, whilst a general soft shudder ran through all her limbs,
which she gave a stretch out, and lay motionless, breathless, dying with
dear delight; and in the height of its expression, showing, through the
nearly closed lids of her eyes, just the edges of their black, the rest
being rolled strongly upwards in their extasy; then her sweet mouth
appeared languish-ingly open, with the tip of her tongue leaning
negligently towards the lower range of her white teeth, whilst natural
ruby colour of her lips glowed with heightened life. Was not this a
subject to dwell upon? And accordingly her lover still kept on her, with
an abiding delectation, till compressed, squeezed and distilled to the
last drop, he took leave with one fervent kiss, expressing satisfied
desires, but unextinguished love.

As soon as he was off, I ran to her, and sitting down on the couch by
her, rais'd her head, which she declined gently, and hung on my bosom,
to hide her blushes and confusion at what had passed, till by degrees
she re-composed herself, and accepted of a restorative glass of wine
from my spark, who had left me to fetch it to her, whilst her own
was readjusting his affaire and buttoning up; after which he led her,
leaning languish-ingly upon him, to oar stand of view round the couch.

And now Emily's partner had taken her out for her share in the dance,
when this transcendently fair and sweet tempered creature readily stood
up; and if a com-extreme pretty features, and that florid health and
complexion to put the rose and lily out of countenance, extreme pretty
features, and that florid health and bloom for which the country girls
are so lovely, might pass her for a beauty, this she certainly was, and
one of the most striking of the fair ones.

Her gallant began first, as she stood, to disengage, her breasts, and
restore them to the liberty of nature, from the easy confinement of no
more than a pair of jumps; but on their coming out to view, we thought
a new light was added to the room, so superiourly shining was their
whiteness; then they rose in so happy a swell as to compose her a well
horned fullness of bosom, that had such an effect on the eye as to seem
flash hardened into marble, of which it emulated the polished gloss, and
far surpassed even the whitest, in the life and lustre of its
colours, white weined with blue. Who could refrain from such provoking
enticements in reach? he touched her breasts, first lightly, when the
glossy smoothness of the skin eluded his hand, and made it slip along
the surface; he pressed them, and the springy flesh that filled them,
thus pitted by force, rose again reboundingly with his hand, and on the
instant defaced the pressure: and alike indeed was the consistence
of all those parts of her body throughout, where the fulness of flesh
compacts and constitutes all that fine firmness which the touch is so
highly attached to. When he had thus largely pleased himself with this
branch of dalliance and delight, he trussed up her petticoat and shift,
in a wisp to her waist, where being tucked in, she stood fairly naked
on every side; a blush at this overspread her lovely face, and her eyes
downcast to the ground, seemed to be for quarter, when she had so great
a right to triumph in all the treasures of youth and beauty that she now
so victoriously displayed. Her legs were perfectly well shaped and
her thighs, which she kept pretty close, shewed so white, so round, so
substantial and abounding in firm flesh, that nothing could afford a
stronger recommendation to the luxury of the touch, which he accordingly
did not fail to indulge in. Then gently removing her hand, which in the
first emotion of natural modesty, she had carried thither, he gave
us rather a glimpse than a view of that soft narrow chink running
its little length downwards, and hiding the remains of it between her
thighs; but plain was to be seen the fringe of light-brown curls, in
beauteous growth over it, that with their silk gloss created a pleasing
variety from the surrounding white, whose lustre too, their gentle
embrowning shade, considerably raised. Her spark then endeavoured, as
she stood, by disclosing her thighs, to gain us a completer sight of
that central charm of attraction, but not obtaining it so conveniently
in that attitude, he led her to the foot of the couch, and bringing
it to one of the pillows gently inclined her head down, so that as she
leaned with it over her crossed hands, straddling with her thighs wide
spread, and jutting her body out, she presented a full back view of
her person, naked to her waist. Her posteriors, plump, smooth, and
prominent, formed luxuriant tracts of animated snow, that splendidly
filled the eye, till it was commanded down the parting or separation
of those exquisitely white cliffs, by their narrow vale, and was there
stopt, and attracted by the embowered bottom-savity, that terminated
this delightful vista and stood moderately gaping from the influence of
her bended posture, so that the agreeable interior red of the sides of
the orifice came into view, and with respect to the white that dazzled
round it, gave somewhat the idea of a pink slash in the glossiest white
satin. Her gallant, who was a gentleman about thirty, somewhat inclined
to a fatness that was in no sort displeasing, improving the hint thus
tendered him of this mode of enjoyment, after setting her well in this
posture, and encouraging her with kisses and caresses to stand him
thro', drew out his affair ready erected, and whose extreme length,
rather disproportioned to its breadth, was the more surprising, as that
excess is not often the case with those of his corpulent habit; making
then the right and direct application, he drove it up to the guard,
whilst the round bulge of those Turkish beauties of her's, tallying
with the hollow made with the bent of his belly and thighs, as he curved
inwards, brought all those parts, surely not un-delightfully, into warm
touch, and close conjunction; his hands he kept passing round her body,
and employed in toying with her enchanting breasts. As soon too as she
felt him at home as he could reach, she lifted her head a little from
the pillow, and turning her neck, without much straining, but her
cheeks glowing with the deepest scarlet, and a smile of the tenderest
satisfaction, met the kiss he pressed forward to give her as they were
thus close joined together: when leaving him to pursue his delights, she
hid again her face and blushes with her hands and pillow, and thus stood
passively and as favourably too as she could, whilst he kept laying at
her with repeated thrusts and making the meeting flesh on both sides
resound again with the violence of them; then ever as he backened from
her, we could see between them part of his long white staff foamingly in
motion, till, as he went on again and closed with her, the interposing
hillocks took it out of sight. Sometimes he took his hands from the
semi-globes of her bosom, and transferred the pressure of them to
those large ones, the present subjects of his soft blockade, which he
squeezed, grasped and played with, till at length in pursuit of driving,
so hotly urged, brought on the height of the fit, with such overpowering
pleasure, that his fair partner became now necessary to support him,
panting, fainting and dying as he discharged; which she no sooner felt
the killing sweetness of, than unable to keep her legs, and yielding to
the mighty intoxication, she reeld, and falling forward on the couch,
made it a necessity for him, if he would preserve the warm-pleasure
hold, to fall upon her, where they perfected, in a continued conjunction
of body and extatic flow, their scheme of joys for that time.

As soon as he had disengaged, the charming Emily got up, and we crowded
round her with congratulations and other officious little services; for
it is to be noted, that though all modesty and reserve were banished
from the transaction of these pleasures, good manners and politeness
were inviolably observed: there was no gross ribaldry, no offensive
or rude behaviour, or ungenerous reproaches to the girls for their
compliance With the humours and desires of the men. On the contrary,
nothing was wanting to soothe, encourage, and soften the sense of their
condition to them. Men know not in general how much they destroy of
their own pleasure, when they break through the respect and tenderness
due to our sex, and even to those of it who live only by pleasing
them. And this was a maxim perfectly well understood by these polite
voluptuaries, these profound adepts in the great art and science of
pleasure, who never shewed these votaries of theirs a more tender
respect than at the time of those exercises of their complaisance, when
they unlocked their treasures of concealed beauty, and shewed out in the
pride of their native charms, ever more touching surely than when they
parade it in the artificial ones of dress and ornament.

The frolic was now come round to me, and it being my turn of
subscription to the will and pleasure of my particular elect, as well
as to that of the company, he came to me, and saluting me very tenderly,
with a flattering eagerness, put me in mind of the compliances my
presence there authorized the hopes of, and at the same time repeated to
me, "that if all this force of example had not surmounted any repugnance
I might have to concur with the humours and desires of the company, that
though the play was bespoke for my benefit, and great as his own private
disappointment might be, he would suffer any thing, sooner than be the
instrument of imposing a disagreeable task."

To this I answered, without the least hesitation, or mincing grimace,
"that had I not even contracted a kind of engagement to be at his
disposal without the least reserve, the example of such agreeable
companions would alone determine me, and that I was in no pain about any
thing but my appearing to so great a disadvantage after such superior
beauties." And take notice that I thought, as I spoke. The frankness
of the answer pleased them all; my particular was complimented on his
acquisition, and, by way of indirect flattery to me, openly envied me.

Mrs. Cole, by the way, could not have given me a greater mark of her
regard than in managing for me the choice of this young gentleman for
my master of the ceremonies: for, independent of his noble birth and the
great fortune he was heir to, his person was even uncommonly pleasing,
well shaped and tall; his face marked with the small-pox, but no more
than what added a grace of more manliness to features rather turned to
softness and delicacy, was marvellously enlivened by eyes which were of
the clearest sparkling black; in short he was one whom any woman would,
in the familiar style, ready call a very pretty fellow.

I was now handed by him to the cockpit of our match, where, as I was
dressed in nothing but a white morning gown, he vouchsafed to play the
male Abigail on this occasion, and spared me the confusion that would
have attended the forwardness of undressing myself: my gown then was
loosen'd in a trice, and I divested of it; my stays next offered an
obstacle which readily gave way, Louisa very readily furnished a pair of
scissors to cut the lace; off went that shell and dropping my uppercoat,
I was reduced to my under one and my shift, the open bosom of which gave
the hands and eyes all the liberty they could wish. Here I imagined the
stripping was to stop, but I reckon short; my spark, at the desire of
the rest, tenderly begged, that I would not suffer the small remains of
a covering to rob them of a full view of my whole person; and for me,
who was too flexibly obsequious to dispute any point with them, and who
considered the little more that remained as very immaterial, I readily
assented to whatever he pleased-In an instant, then, my under petticoat
was untied and at my feet, and my shift drawn over my head, so that my
cap, slightly fastened, came off with it, and brought all my hair down
(of which, be it again remembered without vanity, that I had a very fine
head) in loose disorderly ringlets, over my neck and shoulders, to the
no unfavourable set-off of my skin.

I now stood before my judges in all the truth of nature, to whom I could
not appear a very disagreeable figure, if you please to recollect what
I have beforesaid of my person, which time, that at certain periods of
life robs use every instant of our charms, had, at that of mine, then
greatly improved into full and open, bloom, for I wanted some months
of eighteen. My breasts, which in the state of nudity are ever capital
points, now in no more than in graceful plenitude, maintained a firmness
and steady independence of any stay or support, that dared and invited
the test of the touch. Then I was as tall, as slim-shaped as could
be consistent with all that juicy plumpness of flesh, ever the most
grateful to the senses of sight and touch, which I owed to the
health and youth of my constitution. I had not, however, so thoroughly
renounced all innate shame, as not to suffer great confusion at the
state I saw myself in; but the whole troop round me, men and women,
relieved me with every mark of applause and satisfaction, even
flattering attention to raise and inspire me with even sentiments
of pride on the figure I made, which my friend gallantly protested,
infinitely outshone all other birthday finery whatever; so that had I
leave to set down, for sincere, all the compliments these connoisseurs
overwhelmed me with upon this occasion, I might flatter myself with
having passed my examination with the approbation of the learned.

My friend, however, who for this time had alone the disposal of me,
humoured their curiosity, and perhaps his own, so far, that he placed me
in all the variety of postures and lights imaginable, pointing out
every beauty under every aspect of it, not without such parentheses,
of kisses, such inflammatory liberties of his roving hands, as made all
shame fly before them, and a blushing glow give place to a warmer one
of desire, which led me even to find some relish in the present scene.

But in this general survey, you may be sure, the most material spot of
me was not excused the strictest visitation; nor was it but agreed, that
I had not the least reason to be diffident of passing even for a maid,
on occasion; so inconsiderable a flaw had my preceding adventures
created there, and so soon had the blemish of an over-stretch been
repaired and worn out at any age, and in my naturally small make in that
part.

Now, whether my partner had exhausted all the modes of regaling the
touch or sight, or whether he was now ungovernably wound up to strike, I
know not; but briskly throwing off his clothes, the prodigious heat
bred by a close room, a great fire, numerous candles, and even the
inflammatory warmth of these scenes, induced him to lay aside his shirt
too, when his breeches, before loosened, now gave up their contents
to view, and shew'd in front the enemy I had to engage with, stiffly
bearing up the port of its head imhooded, and glowing red. Then I
plainly saw what I had to trust to: it was one of those just true-sized
instruments, of which the masters have a better command than the more
unwieldy, inordinate sized one are generally under. Straining me then
close to his bosom, as he stood up foreright against me, and applying to
the obvious niche its peculiar idol, he aimed at inserting it, which,
as I forwardly favoured, he effected at once, by canting up my thighs
over his naked hips, and made me receive every inch, and close home;
so-that stuck upon the pleasure-pivot, add clinging round his neck, in
which and in his hair I hid my face, burn-ingly flushing with present
feeling as much as with shame, my bosom glued to him; he carried me once
round the couch, on which he then, without quitting the middle-fastness,
or dischannelling, laid me down, and began with pleasure-grist. But so
provokingly predisposed and primed as we were, by all the moving sights
of the night, our imagination was too much heated not to melt us of the
soonest; and accordingly I no sooner felt the warm spray darted up my
inwards-, from him, but I was punctually on flow, to share the momentary
extasy; but I had yet greater reason to boast of our harmony: for
finding that all the flames of desire were not yet quenched within
me, but that rather, like wetted coals, I glowed the fiercer for this
sprinkling, my hot-mettled spark, sympathizing with me, and loaded for a
double fire, recontinued the sweet battery with undying vigour; greatly
encouraged to accommodate all my motions to his best advantage and
delight; kisses, squeezes, tender murmurs, all came into play, till our
joys growing more turbulent and riotous, threw us into a fond disorder,
and as they raged to a point, bore us far from our selves into an
ocean of boundless pleasures, into which we both plunged together in a
transport of taste. Now all the impressions of burning desire, from
the lively scenes I had been spectatress of, ripened the heat of this
exercise, and collecting to a head, throbbed and agitated me with
insupportable irritations: I perfectly fevered and maddened with their
excess. I bid not now enjoy a calm of reason enough to perceive, but
I extatically, indeed, felt the power of such rare and exquisite
provocatives, as the examples of the night had proved towards thus
exalting our pleasures: which, with great joy. I sensibly found my
gallant shared in, by his nervous and home expressions of it: his eyes
flashing eloquent flames, his action infuriated with the stings of it,
all conspiring to raise my delight, by assuring me of his. Lifted then
to the utmost pitch of joy that human life can bear, undestroyed by
excess, I touched that sweetly critical point, whence scarce prevented
by the injection from my partner, I dissolved, and breaking out into a
deep drawn sigh, sent my whole sensitive soul down to that passage where
escape was denied it, by its being so deliciously plugged and choked up.
Thus we lay a few blissful instants, overpowered, still, and languid;
till, as the sense of pleasure stagnated, we recovered from our trance,
and he slipt out of me, not however before he had protested his extreme
satisfaction by the tenderest kiss and embrace, as well as by the most
cordial expressions.

The company, who had stood round us in a profound silence, when all was
over, helped me to hurry on my clothes in an instant, and complimented
me on the sincere homage they could not escape observing had been done
as they termed it--to the sovereignty of my charms, in my receiving a
double payment of tribute at one juncture. But my partner, now dressed
again, signalized, above all, a fondness unbated by the circumstance of
recent enjoyment; the girls too kissed and embraced me, assuring me
that for that time, or indeed any other, unless I pleased, I was to
go through no farther public trials, and that I was now consummatedly
initiated, and one of them.

As it was an inviolable law for every gallant to keep to his partner,
for the night especially, and even till he relinquished possession over
to the community, in order to preserve a pleasing property, and to avoid
the disgusts and indelicacy of another arrangement, the company, after
a short refection of biscuits and wine, tea and chocolate, served in at
now about one in the morning, broke up, and went off in pairs. Mrs. Cole
had prepared my spark and me an occasion field-bed, to which we retired,
and there ended the night in one continued strain of pleasure, sprightly
and uncloyed enough for us not to have formed one wish for its ever
knowing an end. In the morning, after a restorative breakfast in bed,
he got up, and with very tender assurance of a particular regard for me,
left me to the composure and refreshment of a sweet slumber; waking out
of which, and getting up to dress before Mrs. Cole should come in, I
found in one of my pockets a purse of guineas, which he had slipt there;
and just as I was musing on a liberality I had certainly not expected,
Mrs. Cole came in, to whom I immediately communicated the present, and
naturally offered her whatever share she pleased: but assuring me that
the gentleman had very nobly rewarded her, she would on no terms, no
entreaties, no shape I could put it in, receive any part of it. Her
denial, she observed, was no affectation of grimace, and proceeded to
read me such admirable lessons on the economy of my person and my purse,
as I became amply paid for my general attention and conformity to in
the course of my acquaintance with the town. After which, changing the
discourse, she fell on the pleasures of the preceding night, where I
learned, without much surprise, as I began to enter on her character,
that she had seen every thing that had passed, from a convenient place
managed solely for that purpose, and of which she readily made me the
confidante.

She had scarce finished this, when the little troop of love girls, my
companions, broke in, and renewed their compliments and caresses.. I
observed with pleasure, that the fatigues and exercises of the night
had not usurped in the least on the life of their complexion, or the
freshness of their bloom: this I found, by their confession, was owing
to the management and advice of our rare directress. They went down then
to figure it, as usual, in the shop; whilst I repaired to my lodging,
where I employed myself till I returned to dinner at Mrs. Cole's.

Here I staid in constant amusement, with one or other of these charming
girls, till about five in the evening; when seized with a sudden drowsy
fit, I was prevailed on to go up and doze it off on Harriet's bed, who
left me on it to my repose. There then I laid down in my clothes, and
fell fast asleep, and had now enjoyed, by guess, about an hour's rest,
when I was pleasingly disturbed by my new and favourite gallant, who,
enquiring for me, was readily directed where to find me. Coming then
into my chamber, and seeing me lie alone, with my face turned from the
light towards the inside of the bed, he, without more ado, just slipped
off his breeches, for the greater ease and enjoyment of the naked
touch; and softly turning up my petticoats and shift behind, opened the
prospect of the back avenue to the genial seat of pleasure; where, as I
lay at my side length, inclining rather face downward, I appeared full
fair, and liable to be entered. Laying himself gently down by me, he
invested me behind, and giving me to feel the warmth of his body, as
he applied his thighs and belly close to me, and the endeavours of that
machine, whose touch has something so exquisitely singular in it, to
make its way good into me. I awaked pretty much startled at first, at
seeing who it was, disposed myself to turn to him, when he gave me a
kiss, and desiring me to keep my posture, just lifted up my upper thigh,
and ascertaining the right opening, soon drove it up to the farthest:
satisfied with which, and solacing himself with lying so close in those
parts, he suspended motion, and thus steeped in pleasure, kept me lying
on my side, into him, spoon-fashion, as he termed it, from the snug
indent of the back part of my thighs, and all upwards, into the space
of the bending between his thighs and belly; till, after some time,
that restless and turbulent inmate, impatient by nature of longer quiet,
urged him to action, which now prosecuting with all the usual train of
toying, kissing, and the like, ended at length in the liquid proof on
both sides, that we had not exhausted, or at less were quickly recruited
of last night's draughts of pleasure in us.

With this noble and agreeable youth lived I in perfect joy and
constancy. He was full bent on keeping me to himself, for the
honey-month at least; but his stay in London was not even so long, his
father, who had a post in Ireland, taking him abruptly with him, on
his repairing thither. Yet even then I was near keeping hold of his
affection and person, as he had proposed, and I had consented to follow
him in order to go to Ireland after him, as soon as he could be settled
there; but meeting with an agreeable and advantageous match in that
kingdom, he chose the wiser part, and forebore sending for me, but
at the same time took care that I should receive a very magnificent
present, which did not however compensate for all my deep regret on my
loss of him.

This event also created a chasm in our little society, which Mrs. Cole,
on the foot of her usual caution, was in no haste to fill up; but then
it redoubled her attention to procure me, in the advantages of a traffic
for a counterfeit maidenhead, some consolation for the sort of widowhood
I had been left in; and this was a scheme she had never lost prospect
of, and only waited for a proper person to bring it to bear with.

But I was, it seems, fated to be my own caterer in this, as I had been
in my first trial of the market.

I had now passed near a month in the enjoyment of all the pleasures of
familiarity and society with my companions, whose particular favourites
(the baronet excepted, who soon after took Harriet home) had all, on the
terms of community established in the house, solicited the gratification
of their taste for variety in my embraces; but I had with the utmost art
and address, on various pretexts, eluded their pursuit, without giving
them cause to complain; and this reserve I used neither out of dislike
of them, nor disgust of the thing, but my true reason was my attachment
to my own, and my tenderness of invading the choice of my companions,
who outwardly exempt, as they seemed, from jealousy, could not but in
secret like me the better for the regard I had for, without making a
merit of it to them. Thus easy, and beloved by the whole family, did I
get on; when one day, that, about five in the afternoon, I stepped over
to a fruit shop in Covent Garden, to pick some table fruit for myself
and the young women, I met with the following adventure.

Whilst I was chaffering for the fruit I wanted, I observed myself
followed by a young gentleman, whose rich dress first attracted my
notice; for the rest, he had nothing remarkable in his person, except
that he was pale, thin-made, and ventured himself upon legs rather of
the slenderest. Easy was it to perceive, without seeming to perceive
it, that it was me he wanted to be at; and keeping his eyes fixed on
me, till he came to the same basket that I stood at, and cheapening, or
rather giving the first price asked for the fruit, began his approaches.
Now most certainly I was not at all out of figure to pass for a modest
girl. I had neither the feathers, nor fumet of a taudry town-miss: a
straw hat, a white gown, clean linen, and above all, a certain natural
and easy air of modesty (which the appearances of never forsook me, even
on those occasions that I most brouke in upon it, in practice) were all
signs that gave him no opening to conjecture my condition. He spoke to
me; and this address from a stranger throwing a blush into my cheeks,
that still set him wider of the truth, I answered him, with an
awkwardness and confusion the more apt to impose, as there really was
a mixture of the genuine in them. But when proceeding, on the foot of
having broken the ice, to join discourse, he went into other leading
questions, I put so much innocence, simplicity, and even childishness,
into my answers, that on no better foundation, liking my person as he
did, I will not answer for it, he would have been sworn for my modesty.
There is, in short, in the men, when once they are caught, by the eye
especially, a fund of cullibility that their lordly wisdom little dreams
of, and in virtue of which the most sagacious of them are seen so often
our dupes. Amongst other queries he put to me, one was, whether I was
married? I replied, that I was too young to think of that this many a
year. To that of my age, I answered, and sunk a year upon him, passing
myself for not above seventeen. As to my way of life, I told him I had
served an apprenticeship to a milliner in Preston, and was come to town
after a relation, that I had found, on my arrival, was dead, and now
lived journey-woman to a milliner in town. That last article, indeed,
was not much of the side of what I pretended to pass for; but it did
pass, under favour of the growing passion I had inspired him with. After
he had next got out of me, very dexterously as he thought, what I had no
sort of design to make reserve of, my own, my mistress's name, and place
of abode, he loaded me with fruit, all the rarest and dearest he could
pick out and sent me home, pondering on what might be the consequence of
this adventure.

As soon then as I came to Mrs. Cole's, I related to her all that passed,
on which she very judiciously concluded, that if he did not come after
me there was no harm done, and that, if he did, as her presage suggested
to her he would, his character and his views should be well sifted, so
as to know whether the game was worth the springes; that in the mean
time nothing was easier than my part in it, since no more rested on me
than to follow her cue and promptership throughout, till the last act.

The next morning, after an evening spent on his side, as we afterwards
learnt, in perquisitions into Mrs. Cole's character in the neighbourhood
(than which nothing could be more favourable to her designs upon him),
my gentleman came in his chariot to the shop, where Mrs. Cole alone
had an inkling of his errand. Asking then for her, he easily made a
beginning of acquaintance by bespeaking some millinery ware; when, as I
sat without lifting my eyes, and pursuing the hem of a ruffle with the
utmost composure and simplicity of industry, Mrs. Cole took notice, that
the first impressions I made on him ran no risk of being destroyed by
those of Louisa and Emily, who were then sitting at work by me. After
vainly endeavouring to catch my eyes in rencounter with him (I held my
head down, affecting a kind of consciousness of guilt for having, by
speaking to him given him encouragement and means of following me), and
after giving Mrs. Cole direction when to bring the things home herself,
and the time he should expect them, he went out, taking with him
some goods, that he paid for liberally, for the better grace of his
introduction.

The girls all this time did not in the least smoak the mystery of this
new customer; but Mrs. Cole, as soon as we were conveniently alone,
insured me, in virtue of her long experience in these matters, "that
for this bout my charms had not missed fire; for by his eagerness, his
manner and looks, she was sure he had it: the only point now in doubt
was his character and circumstances, which her knowledge of the town
would soon gain her the sufficient acquaintance with, to take measure
upon."

And effectively, in a few hours, her intelligence served her so well,
that she learned that this conquest of mine was no other than Mr.
Norbert, a gentleman originally of great fortune, which, with a
constitution naturally not the best, he had vastly impaired by his
over-violent pursuit of the vices of the town; in the course of which,
having worn out and staled all the more common modes of debauchery, he
had fallen into a taste of maiden-hunting; in which chase he had ruined
a number of girls, sparing no expense to compass his ends, and generally
using them well till tired, or cooled by enjoying, or springing a new
face, he could with more ease disembarrass himself of the old ones, and
resign them to their fate, as his sphere of achievements of that sort
lay only amongst such as he could proceed with by way of bargain and
sale.

Concluding from these premises, Mrs. Cole observed, that a character of
this sort was ever a lawful prize; that the sin would be, not to make
the best of our market of him; and that she thought such a girl as I
only too good for him at any rate, and on any terms.

She went then, at the hour appointed, to his lodgings in one of our inns
of court, which were furnished in a taste of grandeur that had a special
eye to all the conveniences of luxury and pleasure. Here she found him
in ready waiting; and after finishing her business of pretence, and a
long conduit of discussions concerning her trade, which she said was
very bad, the qualities of her servants, apprentices, journey-women,
the discourse naturally landed at length on me, when Mrs. Cole, acting
admirably the good old prating gossip, who lets every thing escape her
when her tongue is set in motion, cooked him up a story so plausible
of me, throwing in every now and then such strokes of art, with all the
simplest air of nature, in praise of my person and temper, as finished
him finely for her purpose, whilst nothing could be better counterfeited
than her innocence of his. But when now fired and on edge, he proceeded
to drop hints of his design and views upon me, after he had with much
confusion and pains brought her to the point (she kept as long aloof
from it as she thought proper) of understanding him, without now
affecting to pass for a dragoness of virtue, by flying out into those
violent and ever suspicious passions, she stuck with the better grace
and effect to the character of a plain, good sort of woman, that knew
no harm, and that getting her bread in an honest way, was made of stuff
easy and flexible enough to be wrought to his ends, by his superior
skill and address; but, however, she managed so artfully that three or
four meetings took place, before he could obtain the least favourable
hope of her assistance; without which, he had, by a number of fruitless
messages, letters, and other direct trials of my disposition, convinced
himself there was no coming at me, all which too raised at once my
character and price with him.

Regardful, however, of not carrying these difficulties to such a
length as might afford time for starting discoveries, or incidents,
unfavourable to her plan, she at last pretended to be won over by mere
dint of entreaties, promises, and, above all, by the dazzling sum she
took care to wind him up to the specification of, when it was now even a
piece of art to feign, at once, a yielding to the allurements of a great
interest, as a pretext for her yielding at all, and the manner of it
such as might persuade him she had never dipped her virtuous fingers in
an affair of that sort.

Thus she led him through all the gradations of difficulty, and
obstacles, necessary to enhance the value of the prize he aimed at; and
in conclusion, he was so struck with the little beauty I was mistress
of, and so eagerly bent on gaining his ends of me, that he left her no
room to boast of her management in bringing him up to her mark, he drove
so plump of himself into every thing tending to make him swallow the
bait. Not but, in other respects, Mr. Norbert was not clear sighted
enough, or that he did not perfectly know the town, and even by
experience, the very branch of imposition now in practice upon him: but
we had his passion our friend so much, he was so blinded and hurried on
by it, that he would have thought any undeception a very ill office done
to his pleasure. Thus concurring, even precipitately, to the point she
wanted him at, Mrs. Cole brought him at last to hug himself on the cheap
bargain he considered the purchase of my imaginary jewel was to him,
at no more than three hundred guineas to myself, and a hundred to the
brokers: being a slender recompense for all her pains, and all the
scruples of conscience she had now sacrificed to him for this first time
of her life; which sums were to be paid down on the nail, upon delivery
of my person, exclusive of some no inconsiderable presents that had been
made in the course of the negociation: during which I had occasionally,
but sparingly been introduced into his company, at proper times and
hours; in which it is incredible how little it seemed necessary to
strain my natural disposition to modesty higher, in order to pass it
upon him for that a very maid: all my looks and gestures ever breathing
nothing but that innocence which the men so ardently require in us, for
no other end than to feast themselves with the pleasure of destroying
it, and which they are so grievously, with all their skill, subject to
mistakes in.

When the articles of the treaty had been fully agreed on, the stipulated
payments duly secured, and nothing now remained but the execution of the
main point, which centered in the surrender of my person up to his free
disposal and use, Mrs. Cole managed her objections, especially to his
lodgings, and insinuations so nicely, that it became his own mere notion
and urgent request, that this copy of a wedding should be finished at
her house: "At first, indeed, she did not care, not she, to have such
doings in it... she would not for a thousand pounds have any of the
servants or apprentices know it... her precious good name would be gone
for ever...," with the like excuses. However, on superior objections to
all other expedients, whilst she took care to start none but those which
were most liable to them it came round at last to the necessity of her
obliging' him in that conveniency, and of doing a little more where she
had already done so much.

The night then was fixed, with all possible respect to the eagerness
of his impatience, and in the mean time Mrs. Cole had omitted no
instructions, nor even neglected any preparation, that might enable me
to come off with honour, in regard to the appearance of my virginity,
except that, favoured as I was by nature with all the narrowness
of stricture in that part requisite to conduct my designs, I had no
occasion to borrow those auxiliaries of art that create a momentary
one, easily discovered by the test of a warm bath; and as to the usual
sanguinary symptoms of defloration, which, if not always, are generally
attendants on it, Mrs. Cole had made me the mistress of an invention of
her own, which could hardly miss its effect, and of which more in its
place.

Every thing then being disposed and fixed for Mr. Norbert's reception,
he was, at the hour of eleven at night, with all the mysteries of
silence and secrecy, let in by Mrs. Cole herself, and introduced into
her bedchamber, where, in an old-fashioned bed of her's, I lay, fully
undressed, and panting, if not with the fears of a real maid, at least
with those perhaps greater of a dissembled one which gave me an air of
confusion and bashfulness that maiden-modesty had all the honour of,
and was indeed scarce distinguishable from it, even by less partial eyes
than those of my lover: so let me call him, for I ever thought the term
"cully" too cruel a reproach to the men, for their abused weakness for
us.

As soon as Mrs. Cole, after the old gossipery, on these occasions, used
to young women abandoned for the first time to the will of man, had
left us alone in her room, which, by the bye was well lighted up, at
his previous desire, that seemed to bode a stricter examination than
he afterwards made, Mr. Norbert, still dressed, sprung towards the bed,
where I got my head under the clothes, and defended them a good while
before he could even get at my lips, to kiss them: so true it is, that a
false virtue, on this occasion, even makes & greater rout and resistance
than a true one. From thence he descended to my breasts, the feel I
disputed tooth and nail with him till tired with my resistance, and
thinking probable to give a better account to me, he hurried his clothes
off in an instant, and came into bed.

Mean while by the glimpse I stole of him, I could easily discover a
person far from promising any such doughty performances as the storming
of maidenheads generally requires, and whose flimsy consumptive
texture gave him more the air of an invalid that was pressed, than of a
volunteer, on such hot service.

At scarce thirty he had already reduced his strength of appetite down
to a wretched dependance on forced provocatives, very little seconded
by the natural power of a body jaded, and racked off to the less by
constant repeated over draughts of pleasure, which had done the work of
sixty winters on his springs of live: leaving him at the same time all
the fire and head of youth in his imagination, which served at once to
torment and spur him down the precipice.

As soon as he was in bed, he threw off the bedclothes, which I suffered
him to force from my hold, and I now lay as exposed as he could wish,
not only to his attacks, but his visitation of the sheets; where in the
various agitations of the body, through my endeavours to defend myself,
he could easily assure himself there was no preparation, though, to do
him justice, he seemed a less strict examinant than I had apprehended
from so experienced a practitioner. My shift then he fairly tore open,
finding I made too much use of it to barricade my breasts, as well as
the more important avenue: yet in every thing else he proceeded with all
the marks of tenderness and regard to me, whilst the art of my play was
to shew none for him, I acted them all the niceties, apprehensions, and
terrors, supposable for a girl perfectly innocent to feel, at so great
a novelty as a naked man in bed with her for the first time. He scarce
even obtained a kiss but what he ravished; I put his hand away twenty
times from my breasts, where he had satisfied himself of their hardness
and consistence, with passing for hitherto unhandled goods. But when
grown impatient upon the main point, he now threw himself upon me,
and first trying to examine me with his finger, sought to make himself
further way, I complained of his usage bitterly: "I thought he would
not have served a body so... I was ruined... I did not know what I had
done..., I would get up, so I would...;" and at the same time kept my
thighs so fast locked, that it was not for strength like his to force
them open, or do any good. Finding thus my advantages, and that I had
both my own and his motions at command, the deceiving him came so easy,
that it was perfectly playing upon velvet. In the mean time his machine,
which was one of those sizes that slip in and out without being minded,
kept pretty stiffly bearing against that part, which the shutting my
thighs barred access to; but finding, at length he could do no good by
mere dint of bodily strength, he resorted to entreaties and arguments:
to which I only answered, with a tone of shame and timidity, "that I
was afraid he would kill me... Lord!..., would not be served so... I was
never so used in all my born days..., I wondered he was not ashamed of
himself, so I did...," with such silly infantine moods of repulse
and complaint as I judged best adapted to express the character of
innocence, and affright. Pretending, however, to yield at length to the
vehemence of his insistence, in action and words, I sparing disclosed my
thighs, so that he could just touch the cloven inlet with the tip of his
instrument: but as he fatigued and toiled to get in, a twist of my body,
so as to receive it obliquely, not only thwarted his admission, but
giving a scream, as if he had pierced me to the heart, I shook him off
me, with such violence that he could not with all his might to it, keep
the saddle: vexed indeed at this he seemed, but not in the style of
displeasure with me for my skittishness; on the contrary, I dare swear
he held me the dearer, and hugged himself for the difficulties that even
hurt his instant pleasure. Fired, however, now beyond all bearance of
delay, he remounts, and begged of me to have patience, stroking and
soothing me to it by all the tenderest endearments and protestations
of what he would moreover do for me; at which, feigning to be somewhat
softened, and abating of the anger that I had shewn at his hurting me so
prodigiously, I suffered him to lay my thighs aside, and make way for a
new trial; but I watched the directions and management of his point so
well, that no sooner was the orifice in the least open to it, but I
gave such a timely jerk as seemed to proceed not from the evasion of his
entry, but from the pain his efforts at it put me to: a circumstance too
that I did not fail to accompany with proper gestures, sighs and cries
of complaint, of which, "that he had hurt me... he killed me... I should
die...," were the most frequent interjections. But now, after repeated
attempts, in which he had not made the least impression towards gaining
his point, at least for that time, the pleasure rose so fast upon him,
that he could not check or delay it, and in the vigour and fury
which the approaches of the height of it inspired him, he made one
fierce-thrust, that had almost put me by my guard, and lodged it so far
that I could feel the warm inspersion just within the exterior orifice,
which I had the cruelty not to let him finish there, but threw him out
again, not without a most piercing loud exclamation, as if the pain had
put me beyond all regard of being overheard. It was then easy to observe
that he was more satisfied, more highly pleased with the supposed
motives of his baulk of consummation, than he would have-been at the
full attainment of it. It was on this foot that I solved to myself all
the falsity I employed to procure him that blissful pleasure in it,
which most certainly he would not have tasted in the truth of things.
Eased, however, and relieved by one discharge, he now applied himself
to sooth, encourage, and to put me into humour and patience to bear his
next attempt, which he began to prepare and gather force for, from
all the incentives of the touch and sight which he could think of, by
examining every individual part of my whole body, which he declared
his satisfaction with, in raptures of applause, kisses universally
imprinted, and sparing no part of me, in all the eagerest wantonness
of feeling, seeing, and toying. His vigour, however, did not return so
soon, and I felt him more than once pushing at the door, but so little
in a condition to break in, that I question whether he had the power
to enter, had I held it ever so open; but this he then thought me too
little acquainted with the nature of things, to have any regret or
confusion about, and he-kept fatiguing himself and me for a long time,
before he was in any state to resume his attacks with any prospect of
success and then I breathed him so warmly, and kept him so at bay, that
before he had made any sensible progress in point of penetration, he was
deliciously sweated, and wearied out indeed: so that it was deep in
the morning before he achieved his second let-go, about half way of
entrance, I all the while crying and complaining of his prodigious
vigour, and the immensity of what I appeared to suffer splitting
up with. Tired, however, at length, with such athletic drudgery, my
champion began now to give out, and to gladly embrace the refreshment of
some rest. Kissing me then with much affection, and recommending me to
my repose, he presently fell fast asleep, which, as soon as I had well
satisfied myself of, I with much composure of body, so as not to wake
him by any motion, with much ease and safety too, played of Mrs. Cole's
device for perfecting the signs of my virginity. In each of the head
bed-posts, just above where the bedsteads are inserted into them,
there was a small drawer, so artfully adapted to the mouldings of the
timber-work, that it might have escaped even the most curious search:
which drawers were easily opened or shut by the touch of a spring, and
were fitted each with a shallow glass tumbler, full of a prepared fluid
blood, in which lay soaked, for ready use, a sponge, that required no
more than gently reaching the hand to it, taking it out and properly
squeezing between the thighs, when it yelded a great deal more of the
red liquid than would save a girl's honour; after which, replacing
it, and touching the spring, all possibility of discovery, or even of
suspicion, was taken away; and this was not the work of the fourth part
of a minute, and of which ever side one lay, the thing was equally easy
and practicable, by the double care taken to have each bed-post provided
alike. True it is, that had he waked and caught me in the act, it would
at least have covered me with shame and confusion; but them, that he did
not, was, with the precautions I took, a risk of a thousand to one in my
favour.

At ease now, and out of all fear of any doubt or suspicion on his side,
I addressed myself in good earnest to my repose, but could obtain none;
and in about half an hour's time my gentleman waked again, and turning
towards me, I feigned a sound sleep, which he did not long respect; but
girding himself again to renew the onset, he began to kiss and caress
me, when now making as if I just waked, I complained of the disturbance,
and of the cruel pain that this little rest had stole my senses from.
Eager, however, for the pleasure, as well of consummating an entire
triumph over my virginity, he said every thing that could overcome my
resistance, and bribe my patience to the end, which now I was ready to
listen to, from being secure of the bloody proofs I had prepared of his
victorious violence, though I still thought it good policy not to let
him in yet a while. I answered then only to his importunities in sighs
and moans, "that I was so hurt, I could not bear it... I was sure he
had done me a mischief; that he had... he was such a bad man!" At this,
turning down the clothes, and viewing the field of battle by the glimmer
of a dying taper, he saw plainly my thighs, shift, and sheet, all
stained with what he readily took for a virgin effusion, proceeding from
his last half penetration: convinced, and transported at which, nothing
could equal his joy and exultation. The illusion was complete, no other
conception entered his head, but that of his having been at work upon an
unopened mine; which idea, upon so strong an evidence, redoubled at once
his tenderness for me, and his ardour for breaking it wholly up. Kissing
me then with the utmost rapture, he comforted me, and begged my pardon
for the pain he had put me to: observing withal, that it was only a
thing in course; but the worst was certainly past, and that with a
little courage and constancy, I should get it once well over, and never
after experience any thing but the greatest pleasure. By little and
little I suffered myself to be prevailed on, and giving, as it were, up
to the point of him, I made my thighs, insensibly spreading them, yield
him liberty of access, which improving, he got a little within me, when
by a well managed reception I worked the female screw so nicely, that I
kept him from the easy mid-channel direction, and by dexterous wreathing
and contortions, creating an artificial difficulty of entrance, made him
win it inch by inch, with the most laborious struggles, I all the while
sorely complaining: till at length, with might and main, winding his way
in, he got it completely home, and giving my virginity, as he thought,
the coup le grace, furnished me with the cue of setting up a terrible
outcry, whilst he, triumphant and like a cock clapping his wings over
his down-trod mistress, pursued his pleasure: which presently rose, in
virtue of this idea of a complete victory, to a pitch that made me
soon sensible of his melting period; whilst I now lay acting the deep
wounded, breathless, frightened, undone, no longer maid.

You would ask me, perhaps, whether all this time I enjoyed any
perception of pleasure? I assure you, little or none, till just towards
the latter end, a faintish sense of it came on mechanically, from so
long a struggle and frequent fret in that ever sensible part; but,
in the first place, I had no taste for the person I was suffering the
embraces of, on a pure mercenary account; and then, I was not entirely
delighted with myself for the jade's part I was playing, whatever
excuses I might plead for my being brought into it; but then this
insensibility kept me so much the mistress of my mind and motions, that
I could the better manage so close a counterfeit, through the whole
scene of deception.

Recovered at length to a more shew of life, by his tender condolences,
kisses and embraces, I upbraided him, and reproached him with my ruin,
in such natural terms, as added to his satisfaction with himself, for
having accomplished it; and guessing, by certain observations of mine,
that it would be rather favourable to him, to spare him, when he some
time after, feebly enough, came on again to the assault, I resolutely
withstood any further endeavours, on a pretext that flattered his
prowess, of my being so violently hurt and sore, that I could not
possibly endure a fresh trial. He then graciously granted me a respite,
and the next morning soon after advancing, I got rid of further
importunity, till Mrs. Cole, being rung for by him, came in and was made
acquainted, in terms of the utmost joy and rapture, with his triumphant
certainty of my virtue, and the finishing stroke he had given it, in the
course of the night: of which, he added, she would see proof enough in
bloody characters, on the sheets.

You may guess how a woman of her turn of address and experience humoured
the jest, and played him off with mixed exclamations of shame, danger,
compassion for me, and of her being pleased that all was so well over:
in which last, I believe, she was certainly sincere. And now, as the
objection which she had represented as an invincible one, to me lying
the first night at his lodgings (which were studiously calculated for
freedom of intrigues), on the account of my maiden fears and terrors, at
the thought of going to a gentleman's chambers, and being alone with him
in bed, was surmounted, she pretended to persuade me, in favour to him,
that I should go there to him, whenever he pleased, and still keep up
all the necessary appearances of working with her, that I might not
lose, with my character, the prospect of getting a good husband, and
at the same time her house would be kept safer from scandal. All this
seemed so reasonable, so considerate to Mr. Norbert, that he never once
perceived that she did not want him to resort to her house, lest he
might in time discover certain inconsistencies with the character she
had set out with to him: besides that this plan greatly flattered his
own ease, and views of liberty.

Leaving me then to my much wanted rest, he got up, and Mrs. Cole, after
settling with him all points relating to me, got him undiscovered out
of the house. After which, as I was awake, she came in, and gave me
due praises for my success. Behaving too with her usual moderation and
disinterestedness, she refused any share of the sum I had thus earned,
and put me into such a secure and easy way of disposing of my affairs,
which now amounted to a kind of little fortune, that a child of ten
years old might have kept the account and property of them safe in its
hands.

I was now restored again to my former state of a kept mistress, and used
punctually to wait on Mr. Norbert at his chambers whenever he sent a
messenger for me, which I constantly took care to be in the way of, and
managed with so much caution, that he never once penetrated the nature
of my connections with Mrs. Cole; but indolently given up to ease and
the town dissipations, the perpetual hurry of them hindered him from
looking into his own affairs, much less to mine.

In the mean time, if I may judge from my own experience, none are better
paid, or better treated, during their reign, than the mistress of those
who, enervate by nature, debaucheries, or age, have the least employment
for the sex: sensible that a woman must be satisfied some way, they
ply her with a thousand little tender attentions, presents, caresses,
confidences, and exhaust their inventions in means and devices to make
up for the capital deficiency; and even towards lessening that, what
arts, what modes, what refinements of pleasure have they not recourse
to, to raise their languid powers, and press nature into the service of
their sensuality? But here is their misfortune, that when by a course of
teasing, worrying, handling, wanton postures, lascivious motions, they
have at length accomplished a flashy enervate enjoyment, they at the
same time light up a flame in the object of their passion, that, not
having the means themselves to quench, drives her for relief into the
next person's arms, who can finish their work; and thus they become
bawds to some favourite, tried and approved of, for a more vigorous and
satisfactory execution; for with women, of our turn especially, however
well our hearts may be disposed, there is a controlling part, or
queen-seat in us, that governs itself by its own maxims of state,
amongst which not one is stronger, in practice with it, than, in the
matter of is dues, never to accept the will for the deed.

Mr. Norbert, who was much in this ungracious case, though he professed
to like me extremely, could but seldom consummate the main-joy itself
with me, without such a length and variety of preparations, as were at
once wearisome and inflammatory.

Sometimes he would strip me stark naked on a carpet, by a good fire,
when he would contemplate me almost by the hour, disposing me in all the
figures and attitudes of body that it was susceptible of being viewed in;
kissing me in every part, the most secret and critical one so far
from excepted that it received most of that branch of homage. Then
his touches were so exquisitely wanton, so luxuriously diffused
and penetrative at times, that he had made me perfectly rage with
titillating fires, when, after all, and much ado, he had gained a
short-lived erection, he would perhaps melt it away in a washy sweat, or
a premature abortive effusion, that provokingly mocked my eager desires:
or, if carried home, how faultered and unnervous the execution! how
insufficient the sprinkle of a few heat-drops to extinguish all the
flames he had kindled!

One evening, I cannot help remembering, that returning home from him,
with a spirit he had raised in a circle his wand had proved too weak
to lay, as I turned the corner of a street, I was overtaken by a young
sailor, I was then in that spruce, neat, plain dress, which I
ever affected and perhaps might have, in my trip, a certain air of
restlessness unknown to the composure of cooler thoughts. However, he
seized me as a prize, and without farther ceremony threw his arms round
my neck, and kissed me boisterously and sweetly. I looked at him with a
beginning of anger and indignation at his rudeness, that softened away
into other sentiments as I viewed him: for he was tall, manly carriaged,
handsome of body and face, so that I ended my stare, with asking him,
in a tone turned to tenderness, what he meant; at which, with the same
frankness and vivacity as he had begun with me, he proposed treating me
with a glass of wine. Now, certain it is, that had I been in a calmer
state of blood than I was, had I not been under the dominion of
unappeased irritation; but I do not know how it was, my pressing calls,
his figure, the occasion, and if you will, the powerful combination of
all these, with a start of curiosity to see the end of an adventure, so
novel too as being treated like a common street-plyer, made me give
a silent consent; in short, it was not my head that I now obeyed, I
suffered myself to be towed along as it were by this man-of-war,
who took me under his arm as familialry as if he had known me all his
lifetime, and led me into the next convenient tavern, where we were
shown into a little room on one side of the passage. Here, scarce
allowing himself patient till the drawer brought in the wine called
for, he fell directly on board me: when, untucking my handkerchief, and
giving me a snatching buss, he laid my breasts bare at once, which he
handled with that keenness of gust that abridges a ceremonial evermore
tiresome than pleasing on such pressing occasions; and now, hurrying
towards the main point, we found no conveniency to our purpose, two
or three disabled chairs, and a rickety table, composing the whole
furniture of the room. Without more ado, he plans me with my back
standing against the wall, and my petticoats up; and coming out with
a splitter indeed, made it shine, as he brandished it, in my eyes; and
going to work with an impetuosity and eagerness, bred very likely by
a long fast at seat, went to give me a taste of it. I straddled, I
humoured my posture, and did my best in short to buckle to it; I took
part of it in, but still things did not go to his thorough liking;
changing them in a trice his system of battery, he leads me to the table
and with a master-hand lays my head down on the edge of it, and, with
the other canting up my petticoats and shift, bares my naked posteriors
to his blind and furious guide; it forces its way between them, and I
feeling pretty sensibly that it was not going by the right door, and
knocking desperately at the wrong one, I told him of it:--"Pooh!" says
he, "my dear, any port in a storm." Altering, however, directly his
course, and lowering his point, he fixed it right, and driving it up
with a delicious stiffness, made all foam again, and gave me the tout
with such fire and spirit, that in the fine disposition I was in when I
submitted to him and stirred up so fiercely as I was, I got the start of
him, and went away into the melting swoon, and squeezing him, whilst in
the convulsive grasp of it, drew from him such a plenteous bedewal, as
pointed to my own effusion, perfectly floated those parts, and drowned
in a deluge all my raging conflagration of desire.

When this was over, how to make my retreat was my concern; for, though
I had been so extremely pleased with the difficult between this warm
broadside, poured so briskly into me, and the tiresome pawing and toying
to which I had owed the unappeased flames that had driven me into this
step, now I was cooler, I began to apprehend the danger of contracting
an acquaintance with this, however agreeable stranger; who, on his side,
spoke of passing the evening with me and continuing our intimacy, with
an air of determination that made me afraid of its being not so easy
to get away from him as I could wish. In the mean time I carefully
concealed my uneasiness, and readily pretended to consent to stay with
him, telling him I should only step to my lodgings to leave a necessary
direction, and then instantly return. This he very glibly swallowed, on
the notion of my being one of those unhappy street-errants, who devote
themselves to the pleasure of the first ruffian that will stoop to pick
them up, and of course, that I would scarce bilk myself of the hire,
by not returning make the most of the job. Thus he parted with me, not
before, however, he had ordered in my hearing a supper, which I had the
barbarity to disappoint him of my company too.

But when I got home, and told Mrs. Cole my adventure, she represented
so strongly to me the nature and dangerous consequences of my folly,
particularly the risks to my health, in being so openlegged and free,
that I not only took resolutions never to venture so rashly again,
which I inviolably preserved, but passed a good many days in continual
uneasiness, lest I should have met with other reasons, besides the
pleasure of that rencounter, to remember it; but these fears wronged my
pretty sailor, for which I gladly make him this reparation.

I had now lived with Mr. Norbert near a quarter of a year, in which
space I circulated my time very pleasantly, between my amusements at
Mrs. Cole's, and a proper attendance on that gentleman, who paid me
profusely for the unlimited complaisance with which I passively humoured
every caprice of pleasure, and which had won upon him so greatly, that
finding, as he said, all that variety in me alone, which he had sought
for in a number of women, I had made him lose his taste for inconstancy,
and new faces. But what was yet at least agreeable, as well as more
nattering, the love I had inspired him with, bred a deference to me,
that was of great service to his health: for having by degrees, and with
much pathetic representations brought him to some husbandry of it, and
to insure the duration of his pleasures by moderating their use, and
correcting those excesses in them he was so addicted to, and which had
shattered his constitution and destroyed his powers of life in the very
point for which he seemed desirous to live, he was grown more delicate,
more temperate, and in course more healthy; his gratitude for which was
taking a turn very favourable for my fortune, when once more the caprice
of it dashed the cup from my lips.

His sister, lady L..., for whom he had a great affection, desiring him
to accompany her down to Bath for her health, he could not refuse her
such a favour; and accordingly, though he counted on staying away from
me no more than a week at farthest, he took his leave of me with an
ominous heaviness of heart, and left me a sum far above the state of
his fortune, and very inconsistent with the intended shortness of his
journey; but it ended in the longest that can be, and is never but once
taken: for, arrived at Bath, he was not there two days before he fell
into a debauch of drinking with some gentlemen, that threw him into a
high fever, and carried him off in four days' time, never once out of
a delirium. Had he been in his senses to make a will, perhaps he might
have made favourable mention of me in it. Thus, however, I lost him; and
as no condition of life is more subject to revolutions than that of
a woman of pleasure, I soon recovered my cheerfulness, and now beheld
myself once more struck off the list of kept mistresses, and returned
into the bosom of the community, from which I had been in some manner
taken.

Mrs. Cole still continued her friendship, and offered me her assistance
and advice towards another choice; but I was now in ease and affluence
enough to look about me at leisure; and as to any constitutional calls
of pleasure, their pressure, or sensibility, was greatly lessened by a
consciousness of the east with which they were to be satisfied at Mrs.
Cole's house, where Louisa and Emily still continued in the old way; and
my great favourite Harriet used often to come and see me, and entertain
me, with her head and heart full of the happiness she enjoyed with
her dear baronet, whom she loved with a tenderness and constancy,
even though he was her keeper, and what is yet more, had made her
independent, by a handsome provision for her and hers. I was then in
this vacancy from any regular employ of my person in my way of business,
when one day, Mrs. Cole, in the course of the constant confidence we
lived in, acquainted me that there was one Mr. Barville, who used her
house, just come to town, whom she was not a little perplexed about
providing a suitable companion for; which was indeed a point of
difficulty, as he was under the tyranny of a cruel taste: that of an
ardent desire, not only of being unmercifully whipped himself, but of
whipping others, in such sort, that though he paid extravagantly those
who had the courage and complaisance to submit to his humour, there
were few, delicate as he was in the choice of his subjects, who would
exchange turns with him so terribly at the expense of their skin. But,
what yet increased the oddity of this strange fancy was the gentleman
being young; whereas it generally attacks, it seems, such as are,
through age, obliged to have recourse to this experiment, for quickening
the circulation of their sluggish juices, and determining a conflux of
the spirits of pleasure towards those flagging shrivelly parts, that
rise to life only by virtue of those titillating ardours created by
the discipline of their opposites, with which they have so surprising a
consent.

This Mrs. Cole could not well acquaint me with, in any expectation of
my offering for service: for, sufficiently easy as I was in my
circumstances, it must have been the temptation of an immense interest
indeed, that could have induced me to embrace such a job, neither had I
ever expressed, nor indeed, felt the least impulse or curiosity to know
more of a taste, that promised so much more pain than pleasure to those
that stood in no need of such violent goads: what then should move me
to subscribe myself voluntarily to a party of pain, foreknowing it such?
Why, to tell the plain truth, it was a sudden caprice, a gust of fancy
for trying a new experiment, mixed with the vanity of approving my
personal courage to Mrs. Cole, that determined me, at all risks,
to propose myself to her and relieve her from any farther lookout.
Accordingly, I at once pleased and surprised her, with a frank and
unreserved tender of my person to her and her friend's absolute disposal
on this occasion.

My good temporal mother was, however, so kind as to use all the
arguments she could imagine to dissuade me: but, as I found they only
turned on a motive of tenderness to me, I persisted in my resolution,
and thereby acquitted my offer of any suspicion of its not having been
sincerely made, or out of compliment only. Acquiescing then thankfully
in it, Mrs. Cole assured me "that bating the pain I should be put to,
she had no scruple to engage me to this party, which she assured me I
should be liberally paid for, and which, the secrecy of the transaction
preserved safe from the ridicule that otherwise vulgarly attended it;
that for her part, she considered pleasure, of one sort or other, as the
universal port of destination, and every wind that blew thither a good
one, provided it blew nobody any harm; that she rather compassionated,
than blamed those unhappy persons, who are under a subjection they
cannot shake off, to those arbitrary tastes that rule their appetites
of pleasures with an unaccountable control: tastes too, as infinitely
diversified, as superior to, and independent of all reasoning as the
different relishes or palates of mankind in their viands, some
delicate stomach nauseating plain meats, and finding no savour but in
highseasoned, luxurious dishes, whilst others again pique themselves
upon detesting them."

I stood now in no need of this preamble of encouragement, or
justification: my word was given, and I was determined to fulfill my
engagements. Accordingly the night was set, and I had all the necessary
previous instructions how to act and conduct myself. The dining room was
duly prepared and lighted up, and the young; gentleman posted there in
waiting, for my introduction to him.

I was then, by Mrs. Cole, brought in, and presented to him, in a loose
dishabille fitted, by her direction, to the exercise I was to go
through, all in the finest linen and a thorough white uniform:
gown, petticoat, stocking, and satin slippers, like a victim led to
sacrifice; whilst my dark auburn hair, falling in drop-curls over my
neck, created a pleasing distinction of colour from the rest of my
dress.

As soon as Mr. Barville saw me, he got up, with a visible air of
pleasure and surprise, and saluting me, asked Mrs. Cole, if so fine
and delicate a creature would voluntarily submit to such sufferings
and rigours, as were the subject of his assignation. She answered him
properly, and now, reading in his eyes that she could not too soon leave
us together, she went out, after recommending to him to use moderation
with so tender a novice.

But whilst she was employing his attention, mine had been taken up with
examining the figure and person of this unhappy young gentleman, who was
thus unaccountably condemned to have his pleasure lashed into him, as
boys have their learning.

He was exceedingly fair, and, smooth complexioned, and appeared to me no
more than twenty at most, though he was three years older than what
my conjectures gave him; but then he owed this favourable mistake to
a habit of fatness, which spread through a short, squab stature; and
a round, plump, fresh coloured face gave him greatly the look of
a Bacchus, had not an air of austerity, not to say sternness, very
unsuitable even to his shape of face, dashed that character of joy,
necessary to complete the resemblance. His dress was extremely neat, but
plain, and far inferior to the ample fortune he was in full possession
of; this too was a taste in him, and not avarice.

As soon as Mrs. Cole was gone, he seated me near him, when now his face
changed upon me, into an expression of the most pleasing sweetness and
good humour, the most remarkable for its sudden shift from the other
extreme, which I found afterwards, when I knew more of his character,
was owing to a habitual state of conflict with, and dislike of
himself, for being enslaved to so peculiar a lust, by the fatality of a
constitutional ascendant, that rendered him incapable of receiving any
pleasure, till he submitted to these extraordinary means of procuring
it at the hands of pain, whilst the constancy of this repining
consciousness stamped at length that cast of sourness and severity on
his features: which was, in fact, very foreign to the natural sweetness
of his temper.

After a competent preparation by apologies, and encouragement to go
through my part with spirit and constancy, he stood up near the fire,
whilst I went to fetch the instruments of discipline out of a closet
hard by: these were several rods, made each of two or three strong twigs
of birch tied together, which he took, handled, and viewed with as much
pleasure, as I did with a kind of shuddering presage.

Next we took from the side of the room a long broad bench, made easy to
lie at length on by a soft cushion in a callico-cover; and everything
being now ready, he took his coat and waistcoat off; and at his motion
and desire, I unbuttoned his breeches, and rolling up his shirt rather
above his waist, tucked it on securely there; when directing naturally
my eyes to that humoursone master-movement, in whose favaur all these
dispositions were making, it seemed almost shrunk into his body, scarce
showing its tip above the sprout of hairy curls that clothed those
parts, as you may have-seen a wren peeping its head out of the grass.

Stooping them to untie his garters, he gave them to me for the use
of tying him down to the legs of the bench: a circumstance no farther
necessary than, as I suppose, it made part of the humour of the thing,
since he prescribed it to himself, amongst the rest of the ceremonial.

I led him then to the bench, and according to my cue, played at forcing
him to lie down: which, after-some little show of reluctance, for
form-sake, he submitted to; he was straightway extended flat upon his:
belly, on the bench, with a pillow under his face; and as he thus tamely
lay, I tied him slightly hand and feet, to the legs of it; which done,
his shirt remaining-trussed up over the small of his back, I drew his
breeches quite down to his knees; and now he lay, in all the fairest,
broadest display of that part of the back-view; in which a pair of
chubby, smooth-cheeked and passing white posteriors rose cushioning
upwards from two stout, fleshful thighs, and ending their cleft, or
separation by an union at the small of the back, presented a bold mark,
that swelled, as it were, to meet the scourge.

Seizing now one of the rods, I stood over him, and according to his
direction, gave him in one breath, ten lashes with much good-will, and
the utmost nerve and vigour of arm that I could put to them, so as to
make those fleshy orbs quiver again under them; whilst he himself seemed
no more concerned, or to mind them, than a lobster would a flea-bite. In
the mean time, I view intently the effect of them, which to me at last
appeared surprisingly cruel: every lash had skimmed the surface of those
white cliffs, which they deeply reddened, and lapping round the side
of the furthermost from me, cut specially, into the dimple of it, such
livid weals, as the blood either spun out from, or stood in large drops
on; and, from some of the cuts, I picked out even the splinters of the
rod that had stuck in the skin. Nor was this raw work to be wondered
at, considering the greenness of the twigs and the severity of the
infliction, whilst the whole surface of the skin was so smooth-stretched
over the hard and firm pulp of flesh that filled it, as to yield no
play, or elusive swagging under the stroke: which thereby took place the
more plump, and cut into the quick.

I was however already so moved at the piteous sight, that I from my
heart repented the undertaking, and would willing had given over,
thinking he had full enough; but, he encouraging and beseeching me
earnestly to proceed, I gave him ten more lashes; and then resting,
surveyed the increase of bloody appearances. And at length, steeled to
the height, by his stoutness in suffering, I continued the discipline,
by intervals, till I observed him wreathing and twisting his body, in
a way that I could plainly perceive was not the effect of pain, but of
some new and powerful sensation: curious to dive into the meaning of
which, in one of my pauses of intermission, I approached, as he still
kept working, and grinding his belly against the cushion under him: and
first stroking the untouched and unhurt side of the flesh-mount next me,
then softly insinuating my hand under his thigh, felt the posture things
were in forwards, which was indeed surprising: for that machine of him,
which I had, by its appearance, taken for an impalpable, or at least a
very diminutive subject, was now, in virtue of all that smart and
havoc of his skin behind, grown not only to a prodigious stiffness of
erection, but to a size that frighted even me: a non-pareil thickness
indeed! the head of it alone filled the utmost capacity of my grasp.
And when, as he heaved and wriggled to and fro, in the agitation of his
strange pleasure, it came into view, it had something of the air of a
round fillet of veal, and like its owner, squab, and short in proportion
to its breadth; but when he felt my hand there, he begged I would go on
briskly with my jerking, or he should never arrive at the last stage of
pleasure.

Resuming then the rode and the exercise of it, I had fairly worn out
three bundles, when, after an increase of struggles and motion, and a
deep sigh or two, I saw him lie still and motionless; and now he desired
me to desist, which I instantly did; and proceeding to untie him, I
could not but be amazed at his passive fortitude, on viewing the skin of
his butchered, mangled posteriors, late so white, smooth and polished,
now all one side of them a confused cut-work of weals, livid flesh,
gashes and gore, insomuch that when he stood up, he could scarce walk;
in short, he was in sweet-briars.

Then I plainly perceived, on the cushion, the marks of a plenteous
effusion, and already had his sluggard member run up to its old
nestling-place, and enforced itself again, as if ashamed to shew its
head; which nothing, it seems, could raise but stripes inflicted on its
opposite neighbours, who were thus constantly obliged to suffer for his
caprice.

My gentleman had now put on his clothes and recomposed himself, when
giving me a kiss, and placing me by him, he sat himself down as gingerly
as possible, with one side off the cushion, which was too sore for him
to bear resting any part of his weight on.

Here he thanked me for the extreme pleasure I had procured him, and
seeing, perhaps, some marks in my countenance of terror and apprehension
of retaliation on my own skin, for what I had been the instrument of
his suffering in his, he assured me, "he was ready to give up to me any
engagement I might deem myself under to stand him, as he had done me,
but that if I proceeding in my consent to it, he would consider the
difference of my sex, its greater delicacy and incapacity to undergo
pain." Reheartened at which, and piqued in honour, as I thought, not
to flinch so near the trial, especially as I well knew Mrs. Cole was an
eye-witness, from her stand of espial, to the whole of our transaction,
I was now less afraid of my skin, than of his not furnishing me with an
opportunity of signalizing my resolution.

Consonant to this disposition was my answer, but my courage was still
more in my head, than in my heart; and as cowards rush into danger they
fear, in order to be the sooner rid of the pain of that sensation, I
was entirely pleased with his hastening matters into execution.

He had then little to do, but to unloose the strings of my petticoats,
and lift them, together with my shift, navel-high, where he just tucked
them up loosely, and might be slipt up higher at pleasure. Then viewing
me round with great seeming delight, he laid me at length on my face
upon the bench, and when I expected he would tie me, as I had done him,
and held out my hands, not without fear and a little trembling, he
told me, "he would by no means terrify me unnecessarily with such a
confinement; for that though he meant to put my constancy to a trial,
the standing it was to be completely voluntary on my side, and therefore
I might be at full liberty to get up whenever I found the pain too much
for me." You cannot imagine how much I thought myself bound, by being
thus allowed to remain loose, and how much spirit this confidence in
me gave me, so that I was even from my heart careless how much my flesh
might suffer in honour of it.

All my back parts, naked half way up, were now fully at his mercy: and
first, he stood at a convenient distance, delighting himself with a
gloating survey of the attitude I lay in, and of all the secret stores I
thus exposed to him in fair display. Then, springing eagerly towards me,
he covered all those naked parts with a fond profusion of kisses;
and now, taking hold of the rod, rather wantoned with me, in gentle
inflictions on those tender trembling masses of my flesh behind, than in
any way hurt them, till by degrees, he began to tingle them with smarter
lashes, so as to provoke a red colour into them, which I knew, as
well by the flagrant glow I felt there, as by his telling me, they now
emulated the native roses of my other cheeks. When he had thus amused
himself with admiring, and toying with them, he went on to strike
harder, and more hard, so that I needed all my patience not to cry out,
or complain at least. At last, he twigged me so smartly as to fetch
blood in more than one lash: at sight of which he flung down the rod,
flew to me, kissed away the starting drops, and sucking the wounds eased
a good deal of my pain. But now raising me on my knees, and making me
kneel with them straddling wide, that tender part of me, naturally the
province of pleasure, not of pain, came in for its share of suffering:
for now, eyeing it wistfully, he directed the rod so that the sharp ends
of the twigs lighted there, so sensibly, that I could not help wincing,
and writhing my limbs with smart; so that my contortions of body must
necessarily throw it into infinite variety of postures and points of
view, fit to feast the luxury of the eye. But still I bore every thing
without crying out: when presently giving me another pause, he rushed,
as it were, on that part whose lips, and round about, had felt this
cruelty, and by way of reparation, glued his own to them; then he
opened, shut, squeezed them, plucked softly the overgrowing moss, and
all this in a style of wild passionate rapture and enthusiasm, that
expressed excess of pleasure; till betaking himself to the rod again,
encouraged by my passiveness, and infuriated with this strange taste of
delight, he made my poor posteriors pay for the ungovernableness of it;
for now showing them no quarter, the traitor cut me so, that I wanted
but little of fainting away, when he gave over. And yet I did not utter
one groan, or angry expostulation; but in my heart I resolved nothing so
seriously, as never to expose myself again to the like severities.

You may guess then in what a curious pickle those soft flesh-cushions of
mine were, all so red, raw, and in fine, terribly clawed off; but so far
from feeling any pleasure in it, that the recent smart made me pout
a little, and not with the greatest air of satisfaction receive the
compliments, and after-caresses of the author of my pain.

As soon as my clothes were huddled on in a little decency, a supper was
brought in by the discreet Mrs. Cole herself, which might have piqued
the sensuality of a cardinal, accompanied with a choice of the richest
wines: all which she set before us, and went out again, without having,
by a word or even by a smile, given us the least interruption or
confusion, in those moments of secrecy, that we were not yet ripe to the
admission of a third too.

I sat down then, still scarce in charity with my butcher, for such I
could not help considering him, and was moreover not a little piqued
at the gay, satisfied air of his countenance, which I thought myself
insulted by. But when the now necessary refreshment to me of a glass of
wine, and a little eating (all the time observing a profound silence)
had somewhat cheered and restored me to spirits, and as the smart began
to go off, my good humour returned accordingly: which alteration not
escaping him, he said and did every thing that could confirm me in, and
indeed exalt it.

But scarce was supper well over, before a change so incredible was
wrought in me, such violent, yet pleasingly irksome sensations took
possession of me that I scarce knew how to contain myself; the smart
of the lashes was now converted into such a prickly heat, such fiery
tinglings, as made me sigh, squeeze my thighs together, shift and
wriggle about my seat, with a furious restlessness; whilst these itching
ardours, thus excited in those parts on which the storm of discipline
had principally fallen, detached legions of burning, subtile,
stimulating spirits, to their opposite spot and centre of assemblage,
where their titillation raged so furiously, that I was even stinging
made with them. No wonder then that in such a taking, and devoured by
flames that licked up all modesty and reserve, my eyes, now charged
brimful of the most intense desire, fired on my companion very
intelligible signal of distress: my companion, I say, who grew in them
every instant more amiable, and more necessary to my urgent wishes and
hopes of immediate ease.

Mr. Barville, no stranger, by experience, to these situations, soon knew
the pass I was brought to soon perceived my extreme disorder; in favour
of which, removing the table out of the way, he began a prelude that
flattered me with instant relief, to which I was not, however, so near
as I imagined: for as he was unbuttoned to me, and tried to provoke and
rouse to action his unactive torpid machine, he blushingly owned that no
good was to be expected from it, unless I took it in hand to re-excite
its languid loitering powers, by just refreshing the smart of the yet
recent blood-raw cuts, seeing it could, no more than a boy's top, keep
up without lashing. Sensible then that I should work as much for my own
profit as his, I hurried my compliance with his desire, and abridging
the ceremonial, whilst he leaned his head against the back of a chair, I
had scarce gently made him feel the lash, before I saw the object of my
wishes give signs of life, and presently, as it were with a magic touch,
is started up into a noble size and distinction indeed. Hastening then
to give me the benefit of it, he threw me down on the bench; but such
was the refreshed soreness of those parts behind, on my leaning so hard
on them, as became me to compass the admission of that stupendous head
of his machine, that I could not possibly bear it. I got up then, and
tried, by leaning forwards, and turning the crupper on my assailant, to
let him at the back avenue: but here it was likewise impossible to stand
his bearing so fiercely against me, in his agitations and endeavours to
enter that way, whilst his belly battered directly against the recent
sore. What should we do now? both intolerably heated: both in a fury;
but pleasure is ever inventive for its own ends: he strips me in a trice
stark naked, and placing a broad settee-cushion on the carpet before the
fire, oversets me gently, topsy turvy, on it; and handling me only
at the waist, whilst you may be sure I favoured all my dispositions,
brought my legs round his neck; so that my head was kept from the floor
only by my hands and the velvet cushion, which was now bespread with
my flowing hair: thus I stood on my head and hands, supported by him in
such manner, that whilst my thighs clung round him, so as to expose
to his sight all my back figure, including the theatre of his bloody
pleasure, the centre of my fore pair fairly bearded the ob-jest of its
rage, that now stood in fine condition to give me satisfaction for the
injuries of its neighbours. But as this posture was certainly not the
easiest, and our imaginations, wound up to the height, could suffer no
delay, he first, with the utmost eagerness and effort, just lip-lodged
that broad acorn-fashioned head of his instrument; and still befriended
by the fury with which he had made that impression, he soon stuffed
in the rest; when now, with a pursuit of thrusts, fiercely urged, he
absolutely overpowered and absorbed all sense of pain and uneasiness,
whether from my wounds behind, my most untoward posture, or the oversize
of his stretcher, in an infinitely predominant delight; when now all
my whole spirits of life and sensation rushing, impetuously to
the cock-pit, where the prize of pleasure was hotly in dispute and
clustering to a point there, I soon received the dear relief of nature
from these over-violent strains and provocations of it; harmonizing with
which, my gallant spouted into me such a potent overflow of the balsamic
injection, as softened and unedged all those irritating stings of a new
species of titillation, which I had been so intolerably maddened with,
and restored the ferment of my senses to some degree of composure.

I had now achieved this rare adventure ultimately much more to my
satisfaction than I had bespoken the nature of it to turn out; nor
was it much lessened, you may think, by spark's lavish praises of my
constancy and complaisance, which he gave weight to by a present that
greatly surpassed my utmost expectation, besides his gratification to
Mrs. Cole.

I was not, however, at any time re-enticed to renew with him, or resort
again to the violent expedient of lashing nature into more haste than
good speed: which, by the way, I conceive acts somewhat in the manner
of a dose of Spanish flies; with more pain perhaps, but less danger;
and might be necessary to him, but was nothing less so than to me, whose
appetite wanted the bridle more than the spur.

Mrs. Cole, to whom this adventurous exploit had more and more endeared
me, looked on me now as a girl after her own heart, afraid of nothing,
and, on a good account, hardly enough to fight all the weapons of
pleasure through. Attentive then, in consequence of these favourable
conceptions, to promote either my profit or pleasure, she had special
regard for the first, in a new gallant of a very singular turn, that she
procured for and introduced to me.

This was a grave staid, solemn, elderly gentleman, whose peculiar humour
was a delight in combing fine tresses of hair; and as I was perfectly
headed to his taste, he used to come constantly at my toilet hours, when
I let down my hair as loose as nature, and abandoned it to him to do
what he pleased with it; and accordingly he would keep me an hour or
more in play with it, drawing the comb through it, winding the curls
round his fingers, even kissing it as he smoothed it; and all this led
to no other use of my person, or any other liberties whatever, any more
than if a distinction of sexes had not existed.

Another peculiarity of taste he had, which was to present me with a
dozen pairs of the whitest kid gloves at a time: these he would divert
himself with drawing on me, and then biting off their finger ends;
all which fooleries of a silly appetite, the old gentleman paid more
liberally for, than most others did for more essential favours. This
lasted till a violent cough, seizing and laying him up, delivered me
from this most innocent and insipid trifler, for I never heard more of
him after his first retreat.

You may be sure a by-jod of this sort interfered with no other pursuit,
or plan of life; which I led, in truth, with a modesty and reserve
that was less the work of virtue than of exhausted novelty, a glut
of pleasure, and easy circumstances, that made me indifferent to any
engagements in which pleasure and profit were not eminently united; and
such I could, with the less impatience, wait for at the hands of time
and fortune, as I was satisfied I could never mend my pennyworths,
having evidently been served at the top of the market, and even
been pampered with dainties: besides that, in the sacrifice of a few
momentary impulses, I found a secret satisfaction in respecting myself,
as well as preserving the life and freshness of my complexion. Louisa
and Emily did not carry indeed their reserve so high as I did; but still
they were far from cheap or abandoned, though two of their adventures
seemed to contradict this general character, which, for their
singularity, I shall give you in course, beginning first with Emily's:

Louisa and she went one night to a ball, the first in the habit of a
shepherdess, Emily in that of a shepherd: I saw them in their dresses
before they went, and nothing in nature could represent a prettier
boy than this last did, being so fair and well limbed. They had kept
together for some time, when Louisa, meeting an old acquaintance of
hers, very cordially gives her companion the slip, and leaves her
under the protection of her boy's habit, which was not much, and of
her discretion, which was, it seems, still less. Emily, finding herself
deserted, sauntered thoughtless about a while, and, as much for coolness
and air as any thing else, at length pulled off her mask and went to the
sideboard; where, eyed and marked out by a gentleman in a very handsome
domino, she was accosted by, and fell into chat with him. The domino,
after a little discourse, in which Emily doubtless distinguished her
good nature and easiness more than her wit, began to make violent love
to her, and drawing her insensibly to some benches at the lower end of
the masquerade room, got her to sit by him, where he squeezed her hands,
pinched her cheeks, praised and played with her fine hair, admired
her complexion, and all in a style of courtship dashed with a certain
oddity, that not comprehending the mystery of, poor Emily attributed to
his falling in with the humour of her disguise; and being naturally not
the cruellest of her profession, began to incline to a parley on those
essentials. But here was the stress of the joke: he took her really
for what she appeared to be, a smock-faced boy; and she, forgetting her
dress, and of course ranging quite wide of his ideas, took all those
address to be paid to herself as a woman, which she precisely owed to
his not thinking her one. However, this double error was pushed to
such a height on both sides, that Emily, who saw nothing in him but a
gentleman of distinction by those points of dress to which his disguise
did not extend, warmed too by the wine he had plyed her with, and the
caresses he had lavished upon her, suffered herself to be persuaded to
go to a bagnio with him; and thus, losing sight of Mrs. Cole's cautions,
with a blind confidence, put herself into his hands, to be carried
wherever he pleased. For his part, equally blinded by his wishes, whilst
here gregious simplicity favoured his deception more than the most
exquisite art could have done, he supposed, no doubt, that he had
lighted on some soft simpleton, fit for his; purpose, or some kept
minion broken to his hand, who understood him perfectly well, and
entered into his designs. But, be that as it would, he led her to
a coach, went into it with her, and brought her to a very handsome
apartment, with a bed in it; but whether it was a bagnio or not, she
could not tell, having spoken to nobody but himself. But when they were
alone together, and her inamorato began to proceed to those extremities
which instantly discover the sex, she remarked, that no description
could paint up to the life, the mixture of pique, confusion and
disappointment, that appeared in his countenance, joined to the mournful
exclamation: "By heavens, a woman!" This at once opened her eyes, which
had been shut in downright stupidity. However, as if he had meant to
retrieve that escape, he still continued to toy with and fondle her,
but with so staring an alteration from extreme warmth into a chill and
forced civility, that even Emily herself could not but take notice
of it, and now began to wish she had paid more regard to Mrs. Cole's
premonitions against ever engaging with a stranger. And now an excess of
timidity succeeded to an excess of confidence, and she thought herself
so much at his mercy and discretion, that she stood passive throughout
the whole progress of his prelude: for now, whether the impressions
of so great a beauty had even made him forgive her sex, or whether her
appearance or figure in that dress still humoured his first illusion, he
recovered by degrees a good part of his first warmth, and keeping Emily
with her breeches still unbuttoned, stript them down to her knees, and
gently impelling her to lean down, with her face against the bed-side,
placed her so, that the double way, between the double rising behind,
presented the choice fair to him, and he was so fairly set on a
mis-direction, as to give the girl no small alarms for fear of losing
a maidenhead she had not dreamt of. However, her complaints, and a
resistance, gentle, but firm, checked and brought him to himself again;
so that turning his steed's head, he drove him at length in the right
road, in which his imagination having probably made the most of those
resemblances that flattered his taste, he got, with much ado, to his
journey's end: after which, he led her out himself, and walking with her
two or three streets length, got her a chair, when making her a present
not any thing inferior to what she could have expected, he left her,
well recommended to the chairmen, who, on her directions, brought her
home.

This she related to Mrs. Cole and me the same morning, not without the
visible remains of the fear and confusion she had been in, still stamped
on her countenance. Mrs. Cole's remark was, that her indiscretion
proceeding from a constitutional facility, there were little hopes of
any thing curing her of it, but repeated severe experience. Mine was,
that I could not conceive how it was possible for mankind to run into
a taste, not only universally odious, but absurd, and impossible to
gratify; since, according to the notions and experience I had of things,
it was not in nature to force such immense disproportions. Mrs. Cole
only smiled at my ignorance, and said nothing towards my undeception,
which was not affected but by ocular demonstration, some months after,
which a most singular accident furnished me, and which I will here set
down, that I may not return again to so disagreeable a subject.

I had, on a visit intended to Harriet, who had taken lodgings at
Hampton-court, hired a chariot to go out thither, Mrs. Cole having,
promised to accompany me; but some indispensable business intervening,
to detain her, I was obliged to set out alone; and scarce had I got a
third of my way, before the axle-tree broke down, and I was well off to
get out, safe and unhurt, into a public-house, of a tolerable handsome
appearance, on the road. Here the people told me that the stage would
come by in a couple of hours at farthest, upon; which, determining to
wait for it, sooner than lose the jaunt I had got so far forward on, I
was carried into a very clean decent room, up one pair of stairs, which
I took possession of for the time I had to stay, in right of calling for
sufficient to do the house justice.

Here, whilst I was amusing myself with looking out of the window, a
single horse-chaise stopt at the door, out of which lightly leaped two
young' gentlemen, for so they seemed, who came in only as it were to
bait and refresh a little, for they gave their horse to be held! in
readiness against they came out. And presently I heard the door of the
next room, where they were let in, and called about them briskly; and as
soon as they were served, I could just hear that they shut and fastened
the door on the inside.

A spirit of curiosity, far from sudden, since I do not know when I was
without it, prompted me, without any particular suspicion, or other
drift or view, to see what they were, and examine their persons and
behaviour. The partition of our rooms was one of those moveable ones
that, when taken down, served occasionally to lay them into one, for the
conveniency of as larger company; and now, my nicest search could not
shew me the shadow of a peep-hole, a circumstance which probably had not
escaped the review of the parties on the other side, whom much it stood
upon not to be deceived in it; but at length I observed a paper patch of
the same colour as the wainscot, which I took to conceal some flaw; but
then it was so high, that I was obliged to stand upon a chair to reach
it, which I did as soft as possible, and, with a point of a bodkin, soon
pierced it, and opened myself espial room sufficient. And now, applying
my eye close, I commanded the room perfectly, and could see my two
young sparks romping and pulling one another about, entirely, to my
imagination, in frolic and innocent play.

The eldes might be, on my nearest guess, towards nineteen, a tall comely
young man, in a white fustian frock, with a green velvet cape, and cut
bob-wig.

The youngest could not be above seventeen, fair, ruddy, completely well
made, and to say the truth, a sweet pretty stripling: he was too, I
fancy, a country lad, by his dress, which was a green plush frock, and
breeches of the same, white waistcoat and stockings, a jockey cap, with
his fellowish hair, long and loose, in natural curls.

But after a look of circumspection, which I saw the eldest cast every
way round the room, probably in too much hurry and heat not to overlook
the very small opening I was posted at, especially at the height it
was, whilst my eye close to it kept the light from shining through and
betraying it, he said something to his companion that presently changed
the face of things.

For now the elder began to embrace, to press and kiss the younger, to
put his hands into his bosom, and give him such manifest signs of
an amorous intention, as made me conclude the other to be a girl in
disguise: a mistake that nature kept me in countenance for, for she had
certainly made one, when she gave him the made stamp.

In the rashness then of their age, and bent as they were to accomplish
their project of preposterous pleasure, at the risk of the very worst of
consequences, where a discovery was nothing less than improbable, they
now proceeded to such lengths as soon satisfied me what they were.

For presently the eldest unbuttoned the other's breeches, and removing
the linen barrier, brought out to view a white shaft, middle sized, and
scarce fledged, when after handling and playing with it a little, with
other dalliance, all received by the boy without other opposition than
certain wayward coyness, ten times-more alluring than repulsive, he got
him so turned round, with his face from him, to a chair that stood hard
by; when knowing, I suppose, his office, the Ganymede now obsequiously
leaned his head against the back of it, and projecting his body, made a
fair mark, still covered with his shirt. As he thus stood in a side view
to me, but fronting his companion, who, presently unmasking his battery,
produced an engine that certainly deserved to be put to a better use,
and very fit to confirm me in my disbelief of the possibility of
things; being pushed to odious extremities, which I had built on the
disproportion of parts; but this disbelief I was now cured of, as by my
consent all young men should likewise be, that their innocence may not
be betrayed into such snares, for want of knowing the extent of their
danger: for nothing is more certain than that ignorance of advice is by
no means a guard against it.

Slipping, then, aside the young lad's shirt, and tucking it up under
his clothes behind, he shewed to the open air those globular fleshy
eminences that compose the Mount Peasants of Rome, and which now, with
all the narrow vale that intersects them, stood displayed and exposed
to his attack; nor could I without a shudder behold the dispositions he
made for it. First, then, moistening well with spittle his instrument,
obviously to make it glib, he pointed, he introduced it, as I could
plainly discern, not only from its direction and my losing sight of it,
but by the writhing, twisting and soft murmured complaints of the young
sufferer; but at length, the first straits of entrance being pretty well
go through, every thing seemed to move and go pretty currently on, as on
a carpet road, without much rub or resistance; and now, passing one hand
round his minions' hips, he got hold of his red-topped ivory toy,
that stood perfectly stiff, and shewed, that if he was like his mother
behind, he was like his father before; this he diverted himself with,
whilst, with the other he wantoned with his hair, and leaning forward
over his back, drew his face, from which the boy shook the loose curls
that fell over it, in the posture he stood him in, and brought him
towards his, so as to receive a long breathed kiss; after which,
renewing his driving, and thus continuing to harass his rear, the height
of the fist came on with its usual symptoms, and dismissed the action.

The criminal scene they acted, I had the patience to see to an end,
purely that I might gather more facts and certainty against them in my
design to do their deserts instant justice; and accordingly, when they
had re-adjusted themselves; and were preparing to go out, burning as I
was with rage and indignation, I jumped down from the chair, in order
to raise the house upon them, but with such an unlucky impetuosity, that
some nail or ruggedness in the floor caught my foot, and flung me on my
face with such violence, that I fell senseless on the ground, and lay
there some time before any one came to my relief: so that they, alarmed,
I suppose, by the noise of my fall, had more than the necessary time
to make a safe retreat. This they effected, as I learnt, with a
precipitation nobody could account for, until, when come to myself, and
composed enough to speak, I acquainted those of the house with the whole
transaction I had been evidence to.

When I came home again, and told Mrs. Cole this adventure, she very
sensibly observed to me, that "there was no doubt of the due vengeance
one time or other overtaking these miscreants, however they might escape
for the present; and that, had I been the temporal instrument of it, I
should have been put to a great deal more trouble and confusion than
I imagined; that, as to the thing itself, the less said of it was the
better; but that though she might be suspected of partiality, from its
being the common cause of womankind, out of whose mouths this practice
tended to take something more than bread, yet she protested against any
mixture of passion, with a declaration extorted from her by pure regard
to truth; which was, that whatever effect this infamous passion had in
other ages and other countries, it seemed a peculiar blessing on our air
and climate, that there was a plaguespot visibly imprinted on all that
are tainted with it, in this nation at least, for that among numbers of
that stamp whom she had known, or at least were universally under the
scandalous suspicion of it, she would not name an exception hardly to
one of them, whose character was not, in all other respects, the most
worthless and despicable that could be; stript of all the manly virtues
of their own sex, and filled up with only the worst vices and follies of
ours; that, in fine, they were scarce less execrable than ridiculous in
their monstrous inconsistence, of loathing and contemning women, and at
the same time apeing all their manners, airs, lisps, scuttle, and, in
general, all their little modes of affectation, which become them at
least better, than they do these unsexed, male misses."

But here, washing my hands of them, I re-plunge into the stream of my
history, which I may very properly ingraft a terrible sally of Louisa's,
since I had some share in it myself, and have besides engaged myself to
relate it, in point of countenance to poor Emily. It will add, too, one
more example to thousands, in confirmation of the maxim, that women get
once out of compass, there are no lengths of licentiousness, that they
are not capable of running.

One morning then, that both Mrs. Cole and Emily were gone out for the
day, and only Louisa and I (not to mention the house-maid) were left in
charge of the house, whilst we were loitering away the time, in looking
through the shop windows, the son of a poor woman, who earned very hard
bread indeed by mending of stockings, in a stall in the neighbourhood,
offered us some nosegays, ranged round a small basket; by selling of
which the poor boy eked out his mother's maintenance of them both: nor
was he fit for any other way of livelihood, since he was not only
a perfect changeling, or idiot, but stammered so that there was no
understanding even those sounds his half-dozen animals ideas, at most,
prompted him to utter.

The boys and servants in the neighbourhood had given him the nick-name
of good-natured Dick, from the soft simpleton's doing every thing he
was bid at the first word, and from his naturally having no turn
to mischief; then, by the way, he was perfectly well made, stout,
clean-limbed, tall of his age, as strong as a horse, and, withal, pretty
featured; so that he was not, absolutely, such a figure to be snuffled
at neither, if your nicety could, in favour of such essentials, have
dispensed with a face unwashed, hair tangled for want of combing, and
so ragged a pliht, that he might have disputed points of shew with any
heathen philosopher of them all.

This boy we had often seen, and bought his flowers, out of pure
compassion, and nothing more; but just at this time as he stood
presenting us his basket, a sudden whim, a start of wayward fancy,
seized Louisa; and, without consulting me, she calls him in, and
beginning to examine his nosegays, culls out two, one for herself,
another for me, and pulling out half a crown, very currently gives it
him to change, as if she had really expected he could have changed it:
but the boy, scratching his head, made his signs explain his inability
in place of words, which he could not, with all his struggles,
articulate.

Louisa, at this, says: "Well, my lad, come up stairs with me, and I will
give you your due," winking at the same time to me, and beckoning me to
accompany her, which I did, securing first the street-door, that by this
means, together with the shop, became wholly the care of the faithful
house-maid.

As we went up, Louisa whispered me "that she had conceived a strange
longing to be satisfied, whether the general rule held good with regard
to this changeling, and how far nature had made him amends, in her best
bodily gifts, for her denial of the sublimer intellectual ones; begin,
at the same time, my assistance in procuring her this satisfaction." A
want of complaisance was never my vice, and I was so far from opposing
this extravagant frolic, that now, bit with the same maggot, and my
curiosity conspiring with hers, I entered plump into it, on my own
account.

Consequently, soon as we came into Louisa's bed-chamber, whilst she was
amusing him with picking out his nosegays, I undertook the lead, and
began the attack. As it was not then very material to keep much measures
with a mere natural, I made presently free with him, though at my first
motion of meddling, his surprise and confusion made him receive my
advances but awkwardly: nay, insomuch that he bashfully shied, and shied
back a little; till encouraging him with my eyes, plucking him playfully
by the hair, sleeking his cheeks, and forwarding my point by a number
of little wantonnesses, I soon turned him familiar, and gave nature
her sweetest alarm: so that aroused, and beginning to feel himself, we
could, amidst all the innocent laugh and grin I had provoked him into,
perceive the fire lighting in his eyes, and, diffusing over his cheeks,
blend its glow with that of his blushes. The emotion in short of animal
pleasure glared distinctly in the simpleton's countenance; yet struck
with the novelty of the scene, he did not know which way to look or
move; but tame, passive, simpering, with his mouth half open, in stupid
rapture, stood and tractably suffered me to do what I pleased with him.
His basket was dropt out of his hands, which Louisa took care of.

I had now, through more than one rent, discovered and felt his thighs,
the skin of which seemed the smoother and fairer for the coarseness, and
even the dirt of his dress, as the teeth of negroes seem the whiter for
the surrounded black; and poor indeed of habit, poor of understanding,
he was, however, abundantly rich in personal treasures, such as flesh,
firm, plump, and replete with the juices of youth, and robust well-knit
limbs. My fingers too had now got within reach of the true, the genuine
sensitive plant, which, instead of shrinking from the touch, joys to
meet it, and swells and vegetates under it: mine pleasingly informed me
that matters were so ripe for the discovery we meditated, that they were
too mighty for the confinement they were ready to break. A waistband
that I unskewered, and a rag of a shirt that I removed, and which could
not have covered a quarter of it, revealed the whole of the idiot's
standard of distinction, erect, in full pride and display: but such a
one! it was positively of so tremendous a size, that prepared as we were
to see something extraordinary, it still, out of measure, surpassed our
expectation, and astonished even me, who had not been used to trade in
trifles. In fine, it might have answered very well the making a skew of;
its enormous head seemed, in hue and size, not unlike a common sheep's
heart; then you might have trolled dice securely along the broad back
of the body of it; the length of it too was prodigious; then the rich
appendage of the treasure-bag beneath, large in proportion, gathered
and crisped up round in shallow furrows, helped to fill the eye, and
complete the proof of his being a natural, not quite in vain; since it
was full manifest that he inherited, and largely too, the prerogative of
majesty which distinguishes that otherwise most unfortunate condition,
and gave rise to the vulgar saying "That a fool's bauble is a lady's
playfellow." Not wholly without reason: for, generally speaking, it is
in love as it is in war, where the longest weapon carries it. Nature,
in short, had done so much for him in those parts, that she perhaps held
herself acquitted in doing so little for his head.

For my part, who had sincerely no intention to push the joke further
than simply satisfying my curiosity with the sight of it alone, I was
content, in spite of the temptation that stared me in the face, with
having raised a May-pole for another to hang a garland on: for, by this
time, easily reading Louisa's desires in her wishful eyes, I acted the
commodious part, and made her, who sought no better sport, significant
terms of encouragement to go through stitch with her adventure;
intimating too that I would stay and see fair play: in which, indeed, I
had in view to humour a new born curiosity, to observe what appearances
active nature would put on in a natural, in the course of this her
darling operation.

Louisa, whose appetite was up, and who, like the industrious bee, was,
it seems, not above gathering the sweet of so rare a flower, though she
found it planted on a dunghill, was but too readily disposed to take
the benefit of my cession. Urged then strongly by her own desires, and
emboldened by me, she presently determined to risk a trial of parts with
the idiot, who was by this time nobly inflamed for her purpose, by all
the irritation we had used to put the principles of pleasure effectually
into motion, and to wind up the springs of its organ to their supreme
pitch; and it stood accordingly stiff and straining, ready to burst with
the blood and spirits that swelled it... to a bulk! No! I shall never
forget it.

Louisa then, taking and holding the fine handle that so invitingly
offered itself, led the ductile youth, by that mastertool of his, as she
stept backward towards the bed; which he joyfully gave way to, under
the incitations of instinct, and palpably delivered up to the goad of
desire.

Stopped then by the bed, she took the fall she loved, and leaned to the
most, gently backward upon it, still holding fast what she held, and
taking care to give her clothes a convenient toss up, so that her thighs
duly disclosed, and elevated, laid open all the outward prospect of the
treasury of love: the rose-lipt overture presenting the cockpit so fair,
that it was not in nature even for a natural to miss it. Nor did he: for
Louisa, fully bent on grappling with it, and impatient of dalliance or
delay, directed faithfully the point of the battering-piece, and bounded
up with a rage of so varocious appetite, to meet and favour the thrust
of insertion, that the fierce activity on both sides effected it with
such pain of distention, that Louisa cried out violently, that she was
hurt beyond bearing, that she was killed. But it was too late: the storm
was up, and force was on her to give way to it; for now the man-machine,
strongly worked upon by the sensual passion, felt so manfully his
advantages and superiority, felt withal the sting of pleasure so
intolerable, that maddening with it, his joys began to assume a
character of furiousness, which made me tremble for the too tender
Louisa. He seemed, at this juncture, greater than himself; his
countenance, before so void of meaning, or expression, now grew big with
the importance of the act he was upon. In short, it was not now that he
was to be played the fool with. But, what is pleasant enough, I myself
was awed into a sort of respect for him, by the comely terrors his
motions dressed him in: his eyes shooting sparks of fire; his face
glowing with ardours that gave another life to it; his teeth churning;
his whole frame agitated with a raging ungovernable impetuosity: all
sensibly betraying the formidable fierceness with which the genial
instinct acted upon him. Butting then and goring all before him, and mad
and wild like an ower-driven steer, he ploughs up the tender furrow all
insensible to Louisa's complaints; nothing can stop, nothing can keep
out a fury like his: with which, having once got its head in, its blind
rage soon made way for the rest, piercing, rending, and breaking open
all obstruction. The torn, split, wounded girl cries, struggles, invokes
me to her rescue, and endeavours to get from under the young savage,
or shake him off, but alas! in vain: her breath, might as soon have
strength to have quelled his rough assault, or put him out of his
course. And indeed, all her efforts and struggles were managed with such
disorder, that they served rather to entangle, and fold her the faster
in the twine of his boisterous arms; so that she was tied to the stake,
and obliged to fight the match out, if she died for it. For his part,
instinct-ridden as he was, the expressions of his animal passion,
partaking something of ferocity, were rather worrying than kisses,
intermixed with ravenous love-bites on her cheeks and necks, the prints
of which did not wear out for some days after.

Poor Louisa, however, bore up at length better than could have been
expected: and though she suffered, and greatly too, yet, ever true to
the good old cause, she suffered with pleasure and enjoyed her pain. And
soon now, by dint of an enraged enforcement, the brute-machine, driven
like a whirlwind, made all smoke again, and wedging its way up, to the
utmost extremity, left her, in point of penetration, nothing to fear or
to desire: and now,

          "Gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth,"
                                   (Shakespeare.)

Louisa lay, pleased to the heart, pleased to her utmost capacity of
being so, with every fibre in those parts, stretched almost to breaking,
on a rack of joy, whilst the instrument of all this over-fullness
searched her senses with its sweet excess, till the pleasure gained upon
her so, its point stung her so home, that catching at length the rage
from her furious driver and sharing the riot of his wild rapture, she
went wholly out of her mind into that favourite part of her body, the
whole intenseness of which was so fervously filled, and employed:
there alone she existed, all lost in those delirious transports, those
extasies of the senses, which her winking eyes, the brightened vermilion
of her lips and cheeks, and sighs of pleasure deeply fetched, so
pathetically expressed. In short, she was now as mere a machine as much
wrought on, and had her motions as little at her own command, as the
natural himself, who, thus broke in upon her, made her feel with a
vengeance his tempestuous mettle he battered with; their active loins
quivered again with the violence of their conflict, till the surge of
pleasure, foaming and raging to a height, drew down the pearly shower
that was, to allay this hurricane. The purely sensitive idiot then first
shed those tears of joy that attend its last moments, not without an
agony of delight, and even almost a roar of rapture, as the gush escaped
him; so sensibly too for Louisa, that she kept him faithful company,
going off, in consent, with the old symptoms: a delicious delirium, a
tremendous convulsive shudder, and the critical dying: Oh! And now, on
his getting off she lay pleasure-drenched, and regorging its essential
sweets; but quite spent, and gasping for breath, without other sensation
of life than in those exquisite vibrations that trembled still on the
strings of delight; which had been too intensively touched, and which
nature had so ravishingly stirred with, for the senses to be quickly at
peace from.

As for the changeling, whose curious engine had been thus successfully
played off, his shift of countenance and gesture had even something
droll, or rather tragi-comic in it: there was now an air of sad repining
foolishness, superadded to his natural one of no meaning and idiotism,
as he stood with his label of manhood, now lank, unstiffened, becalmed,
and flapping against his thighs, down which it reached half way,
terrible even in its fall, whilst under the dejection of spirit and
flesh, which naturally followed his eyes, by turns, cast down towards
his struck standard, or piteously lifted to Louisa, seemed to require at
her hands what he had so sensibly parted from to her, and now ruefully
missed. But the vigour of nature, soon returning, dissipated the blast
of faintness which the common law of enjoyment had subjected him to;
and now his basket re-became his main concern, which I looked for, and
brought him, whilst Louisa restored his dress to its usual condition,
and afterwards pleased him perhaps more by taking all his flowers
off his hands, and paying him, at his rate, for them, than if she had
embarrassed him by a present, that he would have been puzzled to account
for, and might have put others on tracing the motives of.

Whether she ever returned to the attack I know not, and, to say truth,
I believe not. She had had her freak out, and had pretty plentifully
drowned her curiosity in a glut of pleasure, which, as it happened, had
no other consequence than that the lad, who retained only a confused
memory of the transaction, would, when he saw her, forget her in favour
of the next woman, tempted, on the report of his parts, to take him in.
Louisa herself did not long outstay this adventure at Mrs. Cole's (to
whom, by the bye, we took care not to boast of our exploit, till all
fear of consequences were clearly over): for an occasion presenting
itself of proving her passion for a young fellow, at the expense of her
discretion, proceeding all in character, she packed up her toilet, at
half a day's warning, and went with him abroad, since which I entirely
lost sight of her, and it never fell in my way to hear what became of
her.

But a few days after she had left us, two very occasion, not to wrong
our training at Mrs. Cole's, especially favourites, and free of her
academy, easily obtained her consent for Emily's and my acceptance of a
party of pleasure, at a little but agreeable house, belonging to one of
them situated not far up the river Thames, on the Surrey side.

Every thing being settled, and it being a fine summer day, but rather
of the warmest, we set out after dinner, and got to our rendezvous about
four in the afternoon; where, landing at the foot of a neat, joyous
pavilion, Emily and I were handed into it by our esquires, and there
drank tea with a cheerfulness and gaiety, that the beauty of the
prospect, the serenity of the weather, and the tender politeness of our
sprightly gallants, naturally led us into.

After tea, and taking a turn in the garden, my particular, who was the
master of the house, and had in no sense schemed this party of pleasure
for a dry one, proposed to us, with that frankness which his familiarity
at Mrs. Cole's entitled him to, as the weather was excessively hot,
to bathe together, under a commodious shelter that he had prepared
expressly for that purpose, in a creek of the river, with which a
side-door of the pavilion immediately communicated, and where we might
be sure of having our diversion out, safe from interruption, and with
the utmost privacy.

Emily, who never refused anything, and I, who ever delighted in bathing,
and had no exception to the person who proposed it, or to those pleasure
it was easy to guess it implied, took care, on this occasion, not to
wrong our training at Mrs. Cole's, and agreed to it with as good a grace
as we could. Upon which, without loss of time, we returned instantly to
the pavilion, one door of which opened into a tent, pitched before it,
that with its marquise, formed a pleasing defense again the sun, or the
weather, and was besides as private as we could wish. The lining of it,
embossed cloth, represented a wild forest foliage, from the top, down to
the sides, which, in the same stuff, were figured with fluted pilasters,
with their spaces between filled with flower vases, the whole having a
pay effect croon the eye, wherever you turned it.

Then it reached sufficiently into the water, yet contained convenient
benches round it, on the dry ground, either to keep our clothes, or...,
or..., in short for more uses than resting upon. There was a side-table
too, loaded with sweetmeats, jellies, and other eatables, and bottles
of wine and cordials, by way of occasional relief from any rawness, or
chill of the water, or from any faintness from whatever cause; and in
fact, my gallant, who understood chere entiere perfectly, and who, for
taste (even if you would not approve this specimen of it) might have
been comptroller of pleasures to a Roman emperor, had left no requisite
towards convenience or luxury unprovided.

As soon as we had looked round this inviting spot, and every preliminary
of privacy was duly settled, strip was the word: when the young
gentlemen soon dispatched the undressing each his partner and reduced
us to the naked confession of all those secrets of person which dress
generally hides, and which the discovery of was, naturally speaking, not
to our disadvantage. Our hands, indeed, mechanically carried towards
the most interesting part of us, screened, at first, all from the tufted
cliff downwards, till we took them away at their desire, and employed
them in doing them the same office, of helping off with their clothes;
in the process of which, there passed all the little wantonnesses and
frolics that you may easily imagine.

As for my spark, he was presently undressed, all to his shirt, the
fore-lappet of which as he leaned languishingly on me, he smilingly
pointed to me to observe, as it bellied out, or rose and fell, according
to the unruly starts of the motion behind it; but it was soon fixed, for
now taking off his shirt, and naked as a Cupid, he shewed it me at so
upright a stand, as prepared me indeed for his application to me for
instant ease; but, though the sight of its fine size was fit enough to
fire me, the cooling air, as I stood in this state of nature, joined
to the desire I had of bathing-first, enabled me to put him off, and
tranquillize him, with the remark, that a little suspense would only
set a keener edge on the pleasure. Leading them the way, and shewing our
friends an example of continency, which they were giving signs of losing
respect to, we went hand in hand into the stream, till it took us up to
our necks, where the no more than grateful coolness of the wafer gave
my senses a delicious refreshment from the sultriness of the season, and
made more alive, more happy in myself, and, in course, more alert, and
open to voluptuous impressions.

Here I laved and wantoned with the water, or sportively played with
my companion, leaving Emily to deal with hers at discretion. Mine, at
length, not content with making me take the plunge over head and ears,
kept splashing me, and provoking me with all the little playful tricks
he could devise, and which I strove not to remain in his debt for. We
gave, in short, a loose to mirth; and now, nothing would serve him but
giving his hand the regale of going over every part of me, neck, breast,
belly, thighs, and all the et caetera, so dear to the imagination, under
the pretext of washing and rubbing them; as we both stood in the water,
no higher now than the pit of our stomachs, and which did not hinder him
from feeling, and toying with that leak that distinguishes our sex, and
it so wonderfully water-tight: for his fingers, in vain dilating and
opening it, only let more flame than water into it, be it said without
a figure. At the same time he made me feel his own engine, which was so
well wound up, as to stand even the working in water, and he accordingly
threw one arm round my neck, and was endeavouring to get the better
of that harsher construction bred by the surrounding fluid; and had in
effect one hiway so far as to make me sensible of the pleasing stretch
of those nether lips, from the in-driving machine; when, independent
of my not liking that awkward mode of enjoyment, I could not help
interrupting him, in order to become joint spectators of a plan of joy,
in hot operation between Emily and her partner; who impatient of the
fooleries and dalliance of the bath, had led his nymph to one of the
benches on the green bank, where he was very cordially proceeding to
teach her the difference betwixt jest and earnest.

There, setting her on his knee, and gliding one hand over the surface
of that smooth polished snow-white skin of hers, which now doubly shone
with a dew-bright lustre, and presented to the touch something like what
one would imagine of animated ivory, especially in those ruby-nippled
globes, which the touch is so fond of and delights to make love to,
with the other h was lusciously exploring the sweet secret of nature,
in order to make room for a stately piece of machinery, that stood
up-reared, between her thighs, as she continued siting on his lap, and
pressed hard for instant intromission, which the tender Emily, in a
fit of humour deliciously protracted, affected to decline, and elude the
very pleasure she sighed for, but in a style of waywardness, so prettily
put on, and managed, as to render it ten times more poignant; then her
eyes, all amidst the softest dying languishment, expressed, ait once a
mock denial and extreme desire, whilst her sweetness was zested with a
coyness so pleasingly provoking, her moods of keeping him off were
so attractive, that they redoubled the impetuous rage with, which, he
covered her with kisses: and kisses that, whilst she seemed to shy from
or scuffle for, the cunning wanton contrived such sly returns, of, as
were, doubtless the sweeter for the gust she gave them, of being stolen
ravished.

Thus Emily, who knew no art but that which nature itself, in favour
of her principal end, pleasure, had inspired her with, the art of
yielding, coyed it indeed, but coyed it to the purpose; for with all
her straining, her wrestling, and striving to break from the clasp
of his arms, she was so far wiser yet than to mean it, that in her
struggles, it was visible she aimed at nothing more than multiplying
points of touch with him, and drawing yet closer the folds that held
them every where entwined, like two tendrils of a vine intercurling:
together: so that the same effect, as when Louisa strove in good earnest
to disengage from the idiot, was-now produced by different motives.

Mean while, their emersion out of the cold water had caused a general
glow, a tender suffusion of heightened carnation over their bodies;
both equally white and smoothskinned; so that as their limbs were-thus
amorously interwoven, in sweet confusion, it was scarce possible to
distinguish who they respectively belonged to, but for the brawnier,
bolder muscles of the stronger sex.

In a little time, however, the champion was fairly in with her, and had
tied at all points the true lover's knot; when now, adieu all the little
refinements of a finessed reluctance; adieu the friendly feint! She was
presently driven forcibly out of the power of using any art; and
indeed, what art must not give way, when nature, corresponding with her
assailant, invaded in the heart of her capital and carried by storm, lay
at the mercy of the proud conqueror, who had made his entry triumphantly
and completely? Soon, however, to become a tributary: for the engagement
growing hotter and hotter, at close quarters, she presently brought him
to the pass of paying down the dear debt to nature; which she had no
sooner collected in, but, like a duellist who has laid his antagonist at
his feet, when he has himself received a mortal wound, Emily had
scarce time to plume herself upon her victory, but, shot with the same
discharge, she, in a loud expiring sigh, in the closure of her eyes,
the stretch-out of her limbs, and a remission of her whole frame, gave
manifest signs that all was as it should be.

For my part, who had not with the calmest patience stood in the water
all this time, to view this warm action, I leaned tenderly on my
gallant, and at the close of it, seemed to ask him with my eyes, what he
thought of it; but he, more eager to satisfy me by his actions than by
words or looks, as we shoaled the water towards the shore, showed me the
staff of love so intensely set up, that had not even charity, beginning
at home in this case, urged me to our mutual relief, it would have been
cruel indeed to have suffered the youth to burst with straining, when
the remedy was so obvious and so near at hand.

Accordingly we took a bench, whilst Emily and her spark, who belonged it
seems to the sea, stood at the side-board, drinking to our good voyage:
for, as the last observed, we were well under weigh, with a fair wind up
channel, and full-freighted; nor indeed were we long before we finished
our trip to Cythera, and unloaded in the old haven; but, as the
circumstances-did not admit of much variation, I shall spare you the
description.

At the same time, allow me to place you here an excuse I am conscious of
owing you, for having, perhaps, too much affected the figurative style;
though surely, it can pass nowhere more allowable than in a subject
which is so properly the province of poetry, nay, is poetry itself,
pregnant with every flower of imagination and loving metaphors, even
were not the natural expressions, for respects of fashion and sound,
necessarily forbidden.

Resuming now my history, you may please to know, that what with a
competent number of repetitions, all in the same strain (and, by the
bye, we have a certain natural sense that those repetitions are very
much to the taste), what with a circle of pleasures delicately varied,
there was not a moment lost to joy all the time we staid there,
till late in the night we were re-escorted home by our esquires, who
delivered us safe to Mrs. Cole, with generous thanks for our company.

This too was Emily's last adventure in our way: for scarce a week after,
she was, by an accident too trivial to detail to you the particulars,
found out by her parents, who were in good circumstances, and who had
been punished for their partiality to their son, in the loss of him,
occasioned by a circumstance of their over indulgence to his appetite;
upon which the so long engrossed stream of fondness, running violently
in favour of this lost and inhumanly abandoned child whom if they had
not neglected enquiry about, they might long before have recovered, they
were now so over-joyed at the retrieval of her, that, I presume, it made
them much less strict in examining the bottom of things: for they seemed
very glad to take for granted, in the lump, every thing that the grave
and decent Mrs. Cole was pleased to pass upon them; and soon afterwards
sent her, from the country, handsome acknowledgment.

But it was not so easy to replace to our community the loss of so sweet
a member of it: for, not to mention her beauty, she was one of those
mild, pliant characters, that if one does not entirely esteem, one can
scarce help loving, which is not such a bad compensation neither. Owing
all her weaknesses to good nature, and an indolent facility that kept
her too much at the mercy of first impressions, she had just sense
enough to know that she wanted leading strings, and thought herself so
much obliged to any who would take the pains to think for her, and guide
her, that with a very little management, she was capable of being made a
most agreeable, nay a most virtuous wife: for vice, it is probable, had
never been her choice, or her fate, if it had not been for occasion,
or example, or had she not depended less upon herself than upon her
circumstances. This presumption her conduct afterwards verified: for
presently meeting with a match, that was ready cut and dry for her, with
a neighbour's son of her own rank, and a young man of sense and order,
who took as the widow of one lost at sea (for so it seems one of her
gallants, whose name she had made free with, really was), she naturally
struck into all the duties of her domestic life, with as much simplicity
of affection, with as much constancy and regularity, as if she had never
swerved from a state of undebauched innocence from her youth.

These desertions had, however, now so far thinned Mrs. Cole's cluck that
she was left with only me, like a hen with one chicken; but though she
was earnestly entreated and encouraged to recruit her crops, her growing
infirmities, and, above all, the tortures, of a stubborn hip gout,
which she found would yield to no remedy, determined her to break up her
business, and retire with a decent pittance into the country, where I
promised myself, nothing so sure, as my going down to live with her, as
soon as I had seen a little more of life, and improved my small matters
into a competency that would create in me an independence on the world:
for I was now, thanks to Mrs. Cole, wise enough to keep that essential
in view.

Thus was I then to lose my faithful preceptress, as did the philosophers
of the town the white crow of her profession. For besides that she never
ransacked her customers, whose tastes too she ever studiously consulted,
she never racked her pupils with unconscionable extortions, nor ever
put their hard earnings, as she called them, under the contribution of
poundage. She was a severe enemy to the seduction for innocence, and
confined her acquisitions solely to those unfortunate young women, who,
having lost it, were but the juster objects of compassion: among these,
indeed, she picked out such as suited her views and taking them under
her protection, rescued them from the danger of the public sinks of ruin
and misery, to place, or for them, well or ill, in the manner you have
seen. Having then settled her affairs, she set out on her journey, after
taking the most tender leave of me, and at the end of some excellent
instructions, recommending me to myself, with an anxiety perfectly
maternal. In short, she affected me so much, that I was not presently
reconciled to myself for suffering her at any rate to go without me; but
fate had, it seems, otherwise disposed of me.

I had, on my separation from Mrs. Cole, taken a pleasant convenient
house at Marylebone, but easy to rent and manage from its smallness,
which I furnished neatly and modestly. There, with a reserve of eight
hundred pounds, the fruit of my deference to Mrs. Cole's counsels,
exclusive of clothes, some jewels, and some plate, I saw myself in purse
for a long time, to wait without impatience for what the chapter of
accidents might produce in my favour.

Here, under the new character of a young gentlewoman whose husband was
gone to sea, I had marked me out such lines of life and conduct, as
leaving me a competent liberty to pursue my views either out of pleasure
or fortune, bounded me nevertheless strictly within the rules of decency
and discretion: a disposition, in which you cannot escape observing a
true pupil of Mrs. Cole.

I was scarce, however, well warm in my new abode, when going out one
morning pretty early to enjoy the freshness of it, in the pleasing
outlet of the fields, accompanied only by a maid, whom I had newly
hired, as we were carelessly walking among the trees, we were alarmed
with the noise of a violent coughing: turning our heads towards which,
we distinguished a plain well dressed elderly gentleman, who, attacked
with a sudden fit, was so much overcome, as to be forced to give way to
it and sit down at the foot of a tree, where he seemed suffocating with
the severity of it, being perfectly black in the face; not less moved
than frightened with which, I flew on the instant to his relief, and
using the rote of practice I had observed on the like occasion, I
loosened his cravat and clapped him on the back; but whether to any
purpose, or whether the cough had had its course, I know not, but the
fit immediately went off; and now recovered to his speech and legs, he
returned me thanks with as much emphasis as if I had saved his life.
This naturally engaging a conversation, he acquainted me where he lived,
which was at a considerable distance from where I met him, and where he
had strayed insensibly on the same intention of a morning walk.

He was, as I afterwards learned in the course of the intimacy which this
little accident gave birth to, an old bachelor, turned of sixty, but
of a fresh vigorous complexion, insomuch that he scarce marked five and
forty, having never racked his constitution by permitting his desires to
over-tax his ability.

As to his birth and conditions, his parents, honest and failed
mechanics, had, by the best traces he could get of them, left him an
infant orphan on the parish; so that it was from a charity-school, that,
by honesty and industry, he made his way into a merchant's counting
house, from whence, being sent to a house in Cadiz, he there, by his
talents and activity, acquired not only a fortune, but an immense
one, with which he returned to his native country; where he could not,
however, fish out so much as one single relation out of the obscurity
he was born in. Taking then a taste for refinement, and pleased to enjoy
life, like a mistress in the dark, he flowed his days in all the ease
of opulence, without the least parade of it; and, rather studying
the concealment than the shew of a fortune, looked down on a world he
perfectly knew himself, to his wish, unknown and unmarked by.

But, as I propose to devote a letter entirely to the pleasure of
retracing to you all the particulars of my acquaintance with this ever,
to me, memorable friend, I shall, in this, transiently touch on no
more than may serve, as mortar, to cement, or form the connection of my
history, and to obviate your surprise that one of my blood and relish of
life, should count a gallant of three score such a catch.

Referring then to a more explicit narrative, to explain by what
progressions our acquaintance, certainly innocent at first, insensibly
changed nature, and run into unplatonic length, as might well be
expected from one of my condition of life, and above all, from that
principle of electricity that scarce ever fails of producing fire when
the sexes meet. I shall only here acquaint you, that as age had not
subdued his tenderness for our sex, neither had it robbed him of the
power of pleasing, since whatever he wanted in the bewitching charms of
youth, he atoned for, or supplemented with the advantages of experience,
the sweetness of his manners, and above all, his flattering address in
touching the heart, by an application to the understanding. From him it
was I first learned, to any purpose, and not without infinite pleasure,
that I had such a portion of me worth bestowing some regard on; from him
I received my first essential encouragement, and instructions how to put
it in that train of cultivation, which I have since pushed to the little
degree of improvement you see it at; he it was, who first taught me to
be sensible that the pleasures of the mind were superior to those of
the body; at the same time, that they were so far from obnoxious to, or,
incompatible with each other, that, besides the sweetness in the variety
and transition, the one served to exalt and perfect the taste of the
other, to a degree that the senses alone can never arrive at.

Himself a rational pleasurist; as being much too wise to be ashamed of
the pleasures of humanity, loved me indeed, but loved me with dignity;
in a mean equally removed from the sourness, of forwardness, by which
age is unpleasingly characterized, and from that childish silly dotage
that so often disgraces it, and which he himself used to turn into
ridicule, and compare to an old goat affecting the frisk of a young kid.

In short, every thing that is generally unamiable in his season of life,
was, in him, repaired by so many advantages, that he existed a proof,
manifest at least to me, that it is not out of the power of age to
please, if it lays out to please, and if, making just allowance, those
in that class do not forget, that if must cost them more pains and
attention, than what youth, the natural spring-time of joy, stands in
need of: as fruits out of season require proportionally more skill and
cultivation, to force them.

With this gentleman, who took me home soon after our acquaintance
commenced, I lived near eight months in which time, my constant
complaisance and docility, my attention to deserve his confidence and
love, and a conduct, in general, devoid of the least art and founded on
my sincere regard and esteem for him, won and attached him so firmly to
me, that, after having generously trusted me with a genteel, independent
settlement, proceeding to heap marks of affection on me, he appointed
me, by an authentic will, his sole heiress and executrix: a disposition
which he did not outlive two months, being taken from me by a violent
cold that he contracted, as he unadvisedly ran to the window, on an
alarm of fire at some streets distant, and stood there naked-breasted,
and exposed to the fatal impressions of a damp night air.

After acquitting myself of the duty towards my deceased benefactor, and
paying him a tribute of un-feigned sorrow, which a little time changed
into a most tender, graceful memory of him, which I shall ever retain, I
grew somewhat comforted by the prospect that now opened to me, if not of
happiness, at least of affluence and independence.

I saw myself then in the full bloom and pride of youth (for I was not
yet nineteen), actually at the head of so large a fortune, as it would
have been even the height of impudence in me to have raised my wishes,
much more my hopes to; and that this unexpected elevation did not turn
my head, I owed to the pains my benefactor had taken to form and
prepare me for it, as I owed his opinion of my management of the vast
possessions he left me, to what he had observed of the prudential
economy I had learned under Mrs. Cole, the reserve of which he saw I had
made, was a proof and encouragement to him.

But, alas! how easily in the enjoyment of the greatest sweets in life,
in present possession, poisoned by the regret of an absent one! But my
regret was a mighty and just one, since it had my only truly beloved
Charles for its object.

Given him up I had, indeed, completely, having never once heard from
him since our separation; which, as I found afterwards, had been my
misfortune, and not his neglect, for he wrote me several letters which
had all miscarried; but forgotten him I never had. And amidst all my
personal infidelities, not one had made a pin's point impression on a
heart impenetrable to the true love passion, but for him.

As soon, however, as I was mistress of this unexpected fortune, I felt
more than ever how dear he was to me, from its insufficiency to make
me happy, whilst he was not to share it with me. My earliest care,
consequently, was to endeavour at getting some account of him; but all
my researches produced me no more light, than that his father had been
dead for some time, not so well as even with the world; and that Charles
had reached his port of destination in the South Seas, where, finding
the estate he was sent to recover, dwindled to a trifle, by the loss of
two ships in which the bulk of his uncle's fortune lay, he was come
away with the small remainder, and might, perhaps, according to the best
advice, in a few months return to England, from whence he had, at the
time of this my inquiry, been absent two years and seven months. A
little eternity in love!

You cannot conceive with what joy I embraced the hopes thus given me
of seeing the delight of my heart again. But, as the term of months was
assigned it, in order to divert and amuse my impatience for his return,
after settling my affairs with much ease and security, I set out on a
journey for Lancashire, with an equipage suitable to my fortune, and
with a design purely to revisit my place of nativity, for which I could
not help retaining a great tenderness; and might naturally not be sorry
to shew myself there, to the advantage I was now in pass to do, after
the report Esther Davis had spread of my being spirited away to the
plantations; for on no other supposition could she account for the
suppression of myself to her, since her leaving me so abruptly at the
inn. Another favourite intention I had, to look out for my relations,
though I had none but distant ones, and prove a benefactress to them.
Then Mrs. Cole's place of retirement lying in my way, was not amongst
the least of the pleasures I had proposed to myself in this expedition.

I had taken nobody with me but a discreet decent woman, to figure it as
my companion, besides my servants; and was scarce got into an inn, about
twenty miles from London, where I was to sup and pass the night, when
such a storm of wind and rain come on, as made me congratulate myself on
having got under shelter before it began.

This had continued a good half an hour, when bethinking me of some
directions to be given to the coachman, I sent for him, not caring that
his shoes should soil the very clean parlour, in which the cloth was
laid, I stept into the hall kitchen, where he was, and where, whilst I
was talking to him, I slantingly observed two horsemen driven in by the
weather, and both wringing wet; one of whom was asking if they could not
be assisted with a change, while their clothes were dried. But, heavens!
who can express what I felt at the sound of a voice, ever present to my
heart, and that it now rebounded at! or when pointing my eyes towards
the person it came from, they confirmed its information, in spite of so
long an absence, and of a dress one would have studied for a disguise: a
horseman's great coat, with a stamp-up cape, and his hat flapped...
but what could escape the alertness of a sense truly guided by love?
A transport then like mine was above all consideration, or schemes of
surprise; and I, that instant, with the rapidity of the emotions that I
felt the spur of, shot into his arms, crying out, as I threw mine round
his neck: "My life!... my soul!... my Charles!.." and without further
power of speech, swooned away, under the pressing agitation of joy and
surprise.

Recovered out of my entrancement, I found myself in my charmer's arms,
but in the parlour, surrounded by a crowd which this event had gathered
round us, and which immediately, on a signal from the discreet landlady,
who currently took him for my husband, cleared the room, and desirably
left us alone to the raptures of this reunion; my joy at which had like
to have proved, at the expense of my life, its power superior to that of
grief at our fatal separation.

The first object then, that my eyes opened on, was their supreme idol,
and my supreme wish, Charles, on one knee, holding me fast by the hand
and gazing on me with a transport of fondness. Observing my recovery,
he attempted to speak, and give vent to his patience of hearing my voice
again, to satisfy him once more that it was I; but the mightiness and
suddenness Of the surprise continuing to stun him, choked his utterance:
he could only stammer out a few broken, half-formed, filtering accents,
which my ears greedily drinking in, spelt, and put together, so as to
make out their sense: "After so long!... so cruel an absence!... my
dearest Fanny!... can it?... can it be you?..." stifling me at the time
with kisses, that, stopping my opening mouth, at once prevented the
answer that he panted for, and increased the delicious disorder in
which all my senses were rapturously lost. However, amidst this crowd of
ideas, and all blissful ones, there obtruded only one cruel doubt that
poisoned nearly all the transcendant happiness: and what was it, but my
dread of its being too excessive to be real? I trembled now with my
fear of its being no more than a dream, and of waking out of it into
the horrors of finding it one. Under this fond apprehension, imagining
I could not make too much of the present prodigious joy, before it would
vanish and leave me in the desert again, nor verify its reality too
strongly, I clung to him, I clasped him, as if to hinder him from
escaping me again: "Where have you been?... how could you... could you
leave me?... Say you are still mine... that you still love me... and
thus! thus!" (kissing him as if I would consolidated lips with him) "I
forgive you... forgive my hard fortune in favour of this restoration."

All these interjections breaking from me, in that wildness of expression
that justly passes for eloquence in love, drew from him all the returns
my fond heart could wish or require. Our caresses, our questions, our
answers, for some time observed no order; all crossing, or interrupting
one another in sweet confusion, whilst we exchanged hearts at our eyes,
and renewed the ratifications of a love unabated by time or absence:
not a breath, not a motion, not a gesture on either side, but what was
strongly impressed with it. Our hands, locked in each other, repeated
the most passionate squeezes, so that their fiery thrill went to the
heart again.

Thus absorbed, and concentered in this unutterable delight, I had not
attended to the sweet author of it being thoroughly wet, and in danger
of catching cold; when, in good time, the landlady, whom the appearance
of my equipage (which, bye the bye Charles knew nothing of) had gained
me an interest in, for me and mine interrupted us by bringing in a
decent shift of linen and clothes; which now, somewhat recovered into
a calmer composure by the coming in of a third person, I pressed him
to take the benefit of, with a tender con-cern and anxiety that made me
tremble for his health.

The landlady leaving us again, he proceeded to shift; in the act of
which, though he proceeded with all that modesty which became these
first solemner instants of our re-meeting, after so long an absence,
I could not refrain certain snatches of my eyes, lured by the dazzling
discoveries of his naked skin, that escaped him as he changed his linen,
and which I could not observe the unfaded life and complexion of without
emotions of tenderness and joy, that had himself too purely for their
object, to partake of a loose or mis-timed desire.

He was soon dressed in these temporary clothes, which neither fitted
him, nor became the light my passion placed him in, to me at least; yet,
as they were on him, they looked extremely well, in virtue of that magic
charm which love put into every thing that he-touched, or had relation
to him: and where, indeed, was that dress that a figure like his would
not give grace to? For now, as I eyed him more in detail, I could not
but observe the even favourable alteration which the time of his absence
had produced in his person.

There were still the requisite lineaments, still the same vivid
vermillion and bloom reigning in his face; but now the roses were
more fully blown; the tan of his travels, and a beard somewhat more
distinguishable, had, at the expense of no more delicacy than what he
could well spare, given it an air of becoming manliness and maturity,
that symmetrized nobly with that air of distinction and empire with
which nature had stamped it, in a rare mixture with the sweetness of
it; still nothing had he lost of that smooth plumpness of flesh, which,
glowing with freshness, blooms florid to the eye, and delicious to the
touch; then his shoulders were grown more square, his shape more formed,
more portly, but still free and airy. In short, his figure showed riper,
greater, and perfecter to the experienced eye, than in his tender youth;
and now he was not much more than two and twenty.

In this interval, however, I picked out of the broken, often pleasingly
interrupted account of himself, that he was, at that instant, actually
on his road to London, in not a very paramount plight or condition,
having been wrecked on the Irish coast for which he had prematurely
embarked, and lost the little all he had brought with him from the South
Seas: so that he had not till after great shifts and hardships, in the
company of his fellow-traveller, the captain, got so far on his journey;
that so it was (having heard of his father's death and circumstances,)
he had now the world to begin again, on a new account: a situation,
which he assured me, in a vein of sincerity, that flowing from his
heart, penetrated mine, gave him to farther pain, than that he had not
his power to make me as happy as he could wish. My fortune, you will
please to observe, I had not entered upon any overture of, reserving, to
feast myself with the surprise of it to him, in calmer instants. And, as
to my dress, it could give him no idea of the truth, not only as it was
mourning, but likewise in a style of plainness and simplicity that I had
ever kept to with studied art. He pressed me indeed tenderly to satisfy
his ardent curiosity, both with regard to my past and present state of
life, since his being torn away from me: but I found means to elude
his questions, by answers that shewing his satisfaction at no great
distance, won upon him to waive his impatience, in favour of the
thorough confidence he had in my not delaying it, but for respect I
should in good time acquaint him with.

Charles, however, thus returned to my longing arms, tender, faithful,
and in health, was already a blessing too mighty for my conception: but
Charles in distress!... Charles reduced, and broken down to his naked
personal merit, was such a circumstance, in favour of the sentiments I
had for him, as exceeded my utmost desire; and accordingly I seemed so
visibly charmed, so out of time and measure pleased at his mention of
his ruined fortune, that he could account for it no way, but that the
joy of seeing him again had swallowed up every other sense of concern.

In the mean time, my woman had taken, all possible care of Charles's
travelling companion; and as supper was coming in, he was introduced
to me, when I received him as became my regard for all of Charles's
acquaintance or friends.

We four then supped together, in the style of joy, congratulation, and
pleasing disorder that you may guess. For my part, though all these
agitations had left me not the least stomach, but for that uncloying
feast, the sight of my adored youth, I endeavoured to force it, by way
of example for him, who I conjectured must want such a recruit after
riding; and, indeed, he; ate like a traveller, but gazed at, and
addressed me all the time like a lover.

After the cloth was taken away, and the hour of repose came on, Charles
and I were, without further ceremony, in quality of man and wife, shown
up together to a very handsome apartment, and, all in course, the bed,
they said, the best in the inn.

And here, Decency, forgive me! if once more I violate thy laws and
keeping the curtains undrawn, sacrifice thee for the last time to that
confidence, without reserve, with which I engaged to recount to you the
most striking circumstances of my youthful disorders.

As soon, then, as we were in the room together, left to ourselves, the
sight of the bed starving the remembrance of our first joys, and the
thought of my being instantly to share it with the dear possessor of my
virgin heart, moved me so strongly, that it was well I leaned upon him,
or I must have fainted again under the overpowering sweet alarm. Charles
saw into my confusion, and forgot his own, that was scarce less, to
apply himself to the removal of mine.

But now the true refining passion had regained throughout possession
of me, with all its train of symptoms: a sweet sensibility, a tender
timidity, love-sick yearnings tempered with diffidence and modesty, all
held me in a subjection of soul, incomparably dearer to me than the
liberty of heart which I had been long, too long! the mistress of, in
the course of those grosser gallantries, the consciousness of which now
made me sigh with a virtuous confusion and regret. No real virgin, in
short, in view of the nuptial bed, could give more bashful blushes to
unblemished innocence, than I did to a sense of guilt; and indeed I
loved Charles too truly not to feel severely that I did not deserve him.

As I kept hesitating and disconcerted under this soft distraction,
Charles, with a fond impatience, took the pains to undress me; and all I
can remember amidst the nutter and discomposure of my senses, was, some
flattering exclamation of joy and admiration, more specially at the feel
of my breasts, now set at liberty from my stays, and which panting and
rising in tumultous throbs, swelled upon his dear touch, and gave it the
welcome pleasure of finding them well formed, and un-failed in firmness.

I was soon laid in bed, and scarce languished an instant for the darling
partner of it, before he was undressed and got between the sheets, with
his arms clasped round me, giving and taking, with gust inexpressible,
a kiss of welcome, that my heart rising to my lips stamped with its
warmest impression, concurring to my bliss, with that delicate and
voluptuous emotion which Charles alone had the secret to excite, and
which constitutes the very life, the essence of pleasure.

Mean while, two candles lighted on a side-table near us, and a joyous
wood fire, threw a light into the bed, that took from one sense, of
great importance to our joys, all pretext for complaining of its being
shut out of its share of them; and, indeed, the sight of my idolized
youth was alone, from the ardour with which I had wished for it, without
other circumstance, a pleasure to die of.

But as action was now a necessity to desires so much on edge as ours,
Charles, after a very short prelusive dalliance, lifting up my linen and
his own, laid the broad treasures of his manly chest close to my bosom,
both beating with the tenderest alarms: when now, the sense of his
glowing body, in naked touch with mine, took all power over my thoughts
out of my own disposal, and delivered up every faculty of the soul
to the sensiblest of joys, that affecting me infinitely more with
my distinction of the person, than of the sex, now brought my heart
deliriously into play: my heart, which, eternally constant to Charles,
had never taken any part in my original sacrifices to the calls of
constitution, complaisance, or interest. But ah! what became of me,
when as the powers of solid pleasure thickened upon me, I could not help
feeling the stiff stake that had been adorned with the trophies of
my despoiled virginity, bearing hard and inflexible against one of my
thighs, which I had not yet opened, from a true principle of modesty,
revived by a passion too sincere to suffer any aiming at the false merit
of difficulty, or my putting on an impertinent mock coyness.

I have, I believe, somewhere before remarked, that feel of that
favourite piece of manhood has, in the very nature of it, something
inimitably pathetic. Nothing can be dearer to the touch, nor can affect
it with a more delirious sensation. Think then! as a love thinks, what
must be the consummate transport of that quickest of our senses, in
their central seat too! when, after so long a deprival, it felt itself
re-inflamed under the pressure of that peculiar sceptre-member, which
commands us all: but especially my darling, elect from the face of the
whole earth. And now, at its mightiest point of stiffness, it felt to me
something so subduing so active, so solid and agreeable, that I know
not what name to give its singular impression: but the sentiment of
consciousness of its belonging to my supremely beloved youth, gave me
so pleasing an agitation, and worked so strongly on my soul, that it sent
all its sensitive spirits to that organ of bliss in me, dedicated to its
reception. There, concentering to a point, like rays in a burning glass,
they glowed, they burnt with the intensest heat; the springs of
pleasure were, in short, wound up to such a pitch, I panted now with so
exquisitely keen an appetite for the eminent enjoyment, that I was even
sick with desire, and unequal to support the combination of two distinct
ideas, that delightfully distracted me: for all the thought I was
capable of, was that I was now in touch, at once, with the instrument
of pleasure, and the great seal of love. Ideas that, mingling streams,
poured such an ocean of intoxicating bliss on a weak vessel, all too
narrow to contain it, that I lay overwhelmed, absorbed, lost in an abyss
of joy, and dying of nothing but immoderate delight.

Charles then roused me somewhat out of this extatic distraction, with
a complaint softly murmured, amidst a crowd of kisses, at the position,
not so favourable to his desires, in which I received his urgent
insistance for admission, where that insistance was alone so engrossing
a pleasure, that it made me inconsistently suffer a much dearer one to
be kept out; but how sweet to correct such a mistake! My thighs, now
obedient to the intimations of love and nature, gladly disclose, and
with a ready submission, resign up the soft gateway to the entrance of
pleasure: I see, I feel the delicious velvet tip!... he enters me might
and main, with... oh! my pen drops from here in the extasy now present
to my faithful memory! Description too deserts me, and delivers over a
task, above its strength of wing, to the imagination: but it must be an
imagination exalted by such a flame as mine that can do justice to that
sweetest, noblest of all sensations, that hailed and accompanied
the stiff insinuation all the way up, till it was at the end of its
penetration, sending up, through my eyes, the sparks of the love-fire
that ran all over me and blazed in every vein and every pore of me; a
system incarnate of joy all over.

I had now totally taken in love's true arrow from the point up to
the feather, in that part, where making no new wound, the lips or the
original one of nature, which had owed its first breathing to this dear
instrument, clung, as if sensible of gratitude, in eager suction round
it, whilst all its inwards embraced it tenderly, with a warmth of gust,
a compressive energy, that gave it, in its way, the heartiest welcome
in nature; every fibre there gathering tight round it, and straining
ambitiously to come in for its share of the blissful touch.

As we were giving them a few moments pause to the the delectations of
the senses, in dwelling with the highest relish on this intimatest point
of re-union, and chewing the cud of enjoyment, the impatience natural to
the pleasure soon drove us into action. Then began the driving tumult
on his side, and the responsive heaves on mine, which kept me up to
him; whilst, as our joys grew too great for utterance, the organs of
our voices, voluptuously intermixing, became organs of the touch... how
delicious!... how poignantly luscious!... And now! now I felt, to the
heart of me! I felt the prodigious keen edge, with which love, presiding
over this act, points the pleasure: love! that may be styled the Attic
salt of enjoyment; and indeed, without it, the joy, great as it is,
is still a vulgar one, whether in a king or a beggar; for it is,
undoubtedly, love alone that refines, ennobles, and exalts it.

Thus, happy, then, by the heart, happy by the senses, it was beyond all
power, even of thought, to form the conception of a greater delight than
what I now am consummating the fruition of.

Charles, whose whole frame was convulsed with the agitation of his
rapture, whilst the tenderest fires trembled in his eyes, all assured me
of a perfect concord of joy, penetrated me so profoundly, touched me
so vitally, took me so much out of my own possession, whilst he seemed
himself so much in mine, that in a delicious enthusiasm, I imagined such
a transfusion of heart and spirit, as that coalescing, and making one
body and soul with him, I was he, and he me.

But all this pleasure tending, like life from its first instants,
towards its own dissolution, lived too fast not to bring on upon the
spur its delicious moment of mortality; for presently the approach
of the tender agony discovered itself by its usual signals, that were
quickly followed by my dear lover's emanation of himself, that spun out,
and shot, feelingly indeed! up the ravished indraught: where the sweetly
soothing balmy titillation opened all the juices of joy on my side,
which extatic-ally in flow helped to allay the prurient glow, and
drowned our pleasure for a while. Soon, however, to be on float
again! for Charles, true to nature's laws, in one breath, expiring
and ejaculating, languished not long in the dissolving trance, but
recovering spirit again, soon gave me to feel that the true mettle
spring! of his instrument of pleasure, were, by love, and perhaps, by a
long vacation, wound up too high to be let down by a single explosion:
his stiffnesss till stood my friend. Resuming then the action afresh,
without dislodging, or giving me the trouble of parting from my sweet
tenant, we played over again the same opera, with the same harmony and
concert: our ardours, like our love, knew no remission; and all the
tide serving my lover, lavish of his stores, and pleasure-milked, he
over-flowed me once more from the fulness of his oval reservoirs of the
genial emulsion: whilst, on my side, a convulsive grasp, in the
instant of my giving down the liquid contribution, rendered me sweetly
subservient at once to the increase of joy, and to its effusions:
moving me so, as to make me exert all those springs of the compressive
exsuction, with which the sensitive mechanism of that part thirstily
draws and drains the nipple of Love; with much such an instinctive
eagerness and attachment, as to compare great with less, kind nature
engages infants at the breasts, by the pleasure they find in the motion
of their little mouths and cheeks, to extract the milky stream prepared
for their nourishment.

But still there was no end of his vigour: this double discharge had so
far from extinguished his desires, for that time, that it had not even
calmed them; and at his age, desires are power. He was proceeding then
amazingly to push it to a third triumph, still without uncasing, if a
tenderness, natural to true love, had not inspired me with self-denial
enough to spare, and not over-strain him: and accordingly, entreating
him to give himself and me quarter, I obtained, at length, a short
suspension of arms, but not before he had exult-ingly satisfied me that
he gave out standing.

The remainder of the night, with what we borrowed upon the day, we
employed with unwearied fervour in celebrating thus the festival of our
remeeting; and got up pretty late in the morning, gay, brisk and alert,
though rest had been a stranger to us: but the pleasures of love had
been to us, what the joy of victory is to an army: repose, refreshment,
every thing.

The journey into the country being now entirely out of the question, and
orders having been given overnight for turning the horses' heads towards
London, we left the inn as soon as we had breakfasted, not without a
liberal distribution of the tokens of my grateful sense of the happiness
I had met with in it.

Charles and I were in my coach; the captain and my companion in a chaise
hired purposely for them, to leave us the conveniency of a tete a tete.

Here, on the road, as the tumult of my senses was tolerably composed, I
had command enough of head to break properly to his the course of life
that the consequences of my separation from him had driven me into:
which, at the same time that he tenderly deplored with me, he was the
less shocked at; as, on reflecting how he had left me circumstances, he
could not be entirely unprepared for it.

But when I opened the state of my fortune to him, and with that
sincerity which, from me to him, was so much a nature in me, I beged
of him his acceptance of it, on his own terms. I should appear to you
perhaps too partial to my passion, were I to attempt the doing his
delicacy justice, I shall content myself then with assuring you, that
after his flatly refusing the unreserved, unconditional donation that I
long persecuted him in vain to accept, it was at length, in obedience to
his serious commands (for I stood out unaffectedly, till he exerted the
sovereign authority which love had given him over me), that I yielded my
consent to waive the remonstrance I did not fail of making strongly
to him, against his degrading himself, and incurring the reflection,
however unjust, of having, for respects of fortune, bartered his honour
for infamy and prostitution, in making one his wife, who thought herself
too much honoured in being but his mistress.

The plea of love then over-ruling all objections, for him, which he
could not but read the sincerity of in a heart ever open to him, obliged
me to receive his hand, by which means I was in pass, among other
innumerable blessings, to bestow a legal parentage on those fine
children you have seen by this happiest of matches.

Thus, at length, I got snug into port, where, in the bosom of virtue, I
gathered the only uncorrupt sweets: where, looking back on the course
of vice I had run, and comparing its infamous blandishments with the
infinitely superior joys of innocence, I could not help pitying, even in
point of taste, those who, immersed in gross sensuality, are insensible
to the so delicate charms of VIRTUE, than which even PLEASURE has not
a greater friend, nor VICE a greater enemy. Thus temperance makes men
lords over those pleasures that intemperance enslaves them to: the
one, parent of health, vigour fertility cheerfulness, and every other
desirable good of life; the other, of diseases, debility, barrenness,
self-loathing, with only every evil incident to human nature.

You laugh, perhaps, at this tail-piece of morality, extracted from me by
the force of truth, resulting from compared experiences: you think
it, no doubt, out of character; possibly too you may look on it as the
paultry finesse of one who seeks to mask a devotee to vice under a rag
of a veil, impudently smuggled from the shrine of Virtue: just as if one
was to fancy one's self completely disguised at a masquerade, with no
other change of dress than turning one's shoes into slippers; or, as if
a writer should think to shield a treasonable libel, by concluding it
with a formal prayer for the King. But, independent of my flattering
myself that you have a juster opinion of my sense and sincerity, give
me leave to represent to you, that such a supposition is even more
injurious to Virtue than to me: since, consistently with candour and
good nature, it san have no foundation but in the falsest of fears, that
its pleasures cannot stand in comparison with those of Vice; but let
truth dare to hold it up in its most alluring light: then mark, how
spurious, how low of taste, how comparatively inferior its joys are to
those which Virtue gives sanction to, and whose sentiments are not above
making even a sauce for the senses, but a sauce of the highest relish;
whilst Vices are the harpies that infect and foul the feast. The paths
of Vice are sometimes strewed with roses, but then they are for ever
infamous for many a thorn, for many a cankerworm: those of Virtue are
strewed with roses purely, and those eternally unfading ones.

If you do me then justice, you will esteem me perfectly consistent in
the incense I burn to Virtue. If I have painted Vice in all its gayest
colours, if I have decked it with flowers, it has been solely in order
to make the worthier, the solemner sacrifice of it to Virtue.

You know Mr. C*** O***, you know his estate, his worth, and good sense:
can you, will you pronounce it ill meant, at least of him, when anxious
for his son's morals, with a view to form him to virtue, and inspire him
with a fixed, a rational contempt for vice, he condescended to be his
master of the ceremonies, and led him by the hand through the most noted
bawdy-houses in town, where he took care he should be familiarized with
all those scenes of debauchery, so fit to nauseate a good taste? The
experiment, you will cry, is dangerous. True, on a fool: but are fools
worth so much attention.

I shall see you soon, and in the mean time think candidly of me, and
believe me ever,

MADAM, Yours, etc., etc., etc. X X X.


     THE END





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