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.




Contents


 LETTER THE FIRST
 LETTER THE SECOND


LETTER THE FIRST

Madam,

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 concern 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 drawers 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. Phœbe 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 Phœbe, 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.

Phœbe 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 assure 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.

Phœbe, herself, the hackneyed, thorough-bred Phœbe, 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 Phœbe, “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 Phœbe 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 Phœbe
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. Phœbe
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 Phœbe, 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.

Phœbe’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 Phœbe, 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.

Phœbe, 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 Phœbe 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 Phœbe 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 Phœbe, 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, Phœbe 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 Phœbe, 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
Phœbe 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
violent that it almost intercepted my respiration.

Prepared then, and disposed as I was by the discourse of my companions,
and Phœbe’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 Phœbe’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 smallness 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 Phœbe and received her
explanations upon it.

The opportunity, however, did not offer till next morning, for Phœbe
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.

Phœbe 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.”

Phœbe 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 Phœbe.
“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, Phœbe, 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 Phœbe’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.

Phœbe, 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.

Phœbe, 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 Phœbe, 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.

Phœbe 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 flat, 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 Phœbe 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 Phœbe, 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 man 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
ecstatic 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.

Phœbe, my kind tutoress Phœbe, 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 presents,
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
looked 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 _tête-à-têtes_ 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 invaluable
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 part 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
looked 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 heightener; 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 languishingly 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 languishingly 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 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
ecstatic 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 unhooded, 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 ecstatically, 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 broke 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 flattering, 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 ease 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 further look-out.
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 favour 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 object 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-job 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 eldest 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 male 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 plight, 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 voracious 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 _chère entiêre_ 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 water 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 cætera_, 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 his way 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 he 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 sitting 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, coy’d it indeed, but coy’d 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 smooth-skinned; 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 concern 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 ecstatic 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 ecstatically 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 exultingly 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
_tête-à-tête_.

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