Say! Say! Mr. Hickman!—Who can account for the workings and ways of a passionate and offended woman? Endless would be the histories I could give you, within my own knowledge, of the dreadful effects of woman's passionate resentments, and what that sex will do when disappointed.
There was Miss DORRINGTON, [perhaps you know her not,] who run away with her father's groom, because he would not let her have a half-pay officer, with whom (her passions all up) she fell in love at first sight, as he accidentally passed under her window.
There was MISS SAVAGE; she married her mother's coachman, because her mother refused her a journey to Wales; in apprehension that miss intended to league herself with a remote cousin of unequal fortunes, of whom she was not a little fond when he was a visiting-guest at their house for a week.
There was the young widow SANDERSON, who believing herself slighted by a younger brother of a noble family, (Sarah Stout like,) took it into her head to drown herself.
Miss SALLY ANDERSON, [You have heard of her, no doubt?] being checked by her uncle for encouraging an address beneath her, in spite, threw herself into the arms of an ugly dog, a shoe-maker's apprentice, running away with him in a pair of shoes he had just fitted to her feet, though she never saw the fellow before, and hated him ever after: and, at last, took laudanum to make her forget for ever her own folly.
But can there be a stronger instance in point than what the unaccountable resentments of such a lady as Miss Clarissa Harlowe afford us? Who at this instant, ill as she is, not only encourages, but, in a manner, makes court to one of the most odious dogs that ever was seen? I think Miss Howe should not be told this—and yet she ought too, in order to dissuade her from such a preposterous rashness.
O fie! O strange! Miss Howe knows nothing of this! To be sure she won't look upon her, if this be true!
'Tis true, very true, Mr. Hickman! True as I am here to tell you so!— And he is an ugly fellow too; uglier to look at than me.
Than you, Sir! Why, to be sure, you are one of the handsomest men in England.
Well, but the wretch she so spitefully prefers to me is a mis-shapen, meagre varlet; more like a skeleton than a man! Then he dresses—you never saw a devil so bedizened! Hardly a coat to his back, nor a shoe to his foot. A bald-pated villain, yet grudges to buy a peruke to his baldness: for he is as covetous as hell, never satisfied, yet plaguy rich.