What a multitude of contrivances may not young people fall upon, if the mind be not engaged by acts of kindness and condescension! I am not used by my friends of late as I always used their servants.
When I was intrusted with the family-management, I always found it right, as well in policy as generosity, to repose a trust in them. Not to seem to expect or depend upon justice from them, is in a manner to bid them to take opportunities, whenever they offer, to be unjust.
Mr. Solmes, (to expatiate on this low, but not unuseful subject,) in his more trifling solicitudes, would have had a sorry key-keeper in me. Were I mistress of a family, I would not either take to myself, or give to servants, the pain of keeping those I had reason to suspect. People low in station have often minds not sordid. Nay, I have sometimes thought, that (even take number for number) there are more honest low people, than honest high. In the one, honest is their chief pride. In the other, the love of power, of grandeur, of pleasure, mislead; and that and their ambition induce a paramount pride, which too often swallows up the more laudable one.
Many of the former would scorn to deceive a confidence. But I have seen, among the most ignorant of their class, a susceptibility of resentment, if their honesty has been suspected: and have more than once been forced to put a servant right, whom I have heard say, that, although she valued herself upon her honesty, no master or mistress should suspect her for nothing.
How far has the comparison I had in my head, between my friends treatment of me, and my treatment of the servants, carried me!—But we always allowed ourselves to expatiate on such subjects, whether low or high, as might tend to enlarge our minds, or mend our management, whether notional or practical, and whether such expatiating respected our present, or might respect our probable future situations.
What I was principally leading to, was to tell you how ingenious I am in my contrivances and pretences to blind my gaoleress, and to take off the jealousy of her principals on my going down so often into the garden and poultry-yard. People suspiciously treated are never I believe at a loss for invention. Sometimes I want air, and am better the moment I am out of my chamber.—Sometimes spirits; and then my bantams and pheasants or the cascade divert me; the former, by their inspiring liveliness; the latter, by its echoing dashes, and hollow murmurs.—Sometimes, solitude is of all things my wish; and the awful silence of the night, the spangled element, and the rising and setting sun, how promotive of contemplation!—Sometimes, when I intend nothing, and expect no letters, I am officious to take Betty with me; and at others, bespeak her attendance, when I know she is otherwise employed, and cannot give it me.
These more capital artifices I branch out into lesser ones, without number. Yet all have not only the face of truth, but are real truths; although not my principal motive. How prompt a thing is will!—What impediments does dislike furnish!—How swiftly, through every difficulty, do we move with the one!—how tardily with the other!—every trifling obstruction weighing us down, as if lead were fastened to our feet!
FRIDAY MORNING, ELEVEN O'CLOCK.
I have already made up my parcel of linen. My heart ached all the time I was employed about it; and still aches, at the thoughts of its being a necessary precaution.
When the parcel comes to your hands, as I hope it safely will, you will be pleased to open it. You will find in it two parcels sealed up; one of which contains the letters you have not yet seen; being those written since I left you: in the other are all the letters and copies of letters that have passed between you and me since I was last with you; with some other papers on subjects so much above me, that I cannot wish them to be seen by any body whose indulgence I am not so sure of, as I am of yours. If my judgment ripen with my years, perhaps I may review them.