I believe Mr. Solmes will look as much like a fool as I shall do, if it be true, as my uncle Harlowe writes, and as Betty often tells me, that he is as much afraid of seeing me, as I am of seeing him.
Adieu, my happy, thrice-happy Miss Howe, who have no hard terms fixed to your duty!—Who have nothing to do, but to fall in with a choice your mother has made for you, to which you have not, nor can have, a just objection: except the frowardness of our sex, as our free censurers would perhaps take the liberty to say, makes it one, that the choice was your mother's, at first hand. Perverse nature, we know, loves not to be prescribed to; although youth is not so well qualified, either by sedateness or experience, to choose for itself.
To know your own happiness, and that it is now, nor to leave it to after reflection to look back upon the preferable past with a heavy and self accusing heart, that you did not choose it when you might have chosen it, is all that is necessary to complete your felicity!—And this power is wished you by
Your CLARISSA HARLOWE.
LETTER XXX
MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE SATURDAY, APRIL 2.
I ought yesterday to have acknowledged the receipt of your parcel. Robin tells me, that the Joseph Leman, whom you mention as the traitor, saw him. He was in the poultry-yard, and spoke to Robin over the bank which divides that from the green-lane. 'What brings you hither, Mr. Robert?—But I can tell. Hie away, as fast as you can.'
No doubt but their dependence upon this fellow's vigilance, and upon Betty's, leaves you more at liberty in your airings, than you would otherwise be. But you are the only person I ever heard of, who in such circumstances had not some faithful servant to trust little offices to. A poet, my dear, would not have gone to work for an Angelica, without giving her her Violetta, her Cleante, her Clelia, or some such pretty-named confidant—an old nurse at the least.
I read to my mother several passages of your letters. But your last paragraph, in your yesterday's quite charmed her. You have won her heart by it, she told me. And while her fit of gratitude for it lasted, I was thinking to make my proposal, and to press it with all the earnestness I could give it, when Hickman came in, making his legs, and stroking his cravat and ruffles.