play with in my father's time had plenty of money, and I now was kept without any, they soon shunned me, and I was as willing to avoid them, having too much pride to be beholden to them for paying my share of the expense. I had now nothing to do but to fly to books for refuge: all the pleasure I had was in reading romances, so that by the time I was fifteen, my head was full of nothing but love. While I was in this disposition, one Sunday, as I came out of church, an old woman followed me, and whispered in my ear, if I had a mind to save a pretty young fellow's life, I should give a kind answer to a note he had sent by her; which she put into my hand, and presently mixed amongst the crowd. I made haste home with the utmost impatience to read my letter, it contained the strongest expressions of love, and was writ so much in the strain of some of my favourite books, that I was overjoyed at the thoughts of such an adventure. However, I would not answer it, thinking some years' service due to me, before such a favour should be granted; for I began now to look on myself as the heroine of a romance. The young man was clerk to an attorney in the neighbourhood, and was none of those lukewarm lovers who require their mistresses to meet them half way, but he followed me with the utmost assiduity. This exactly suited my taste, and I soon found a great inclination for him, yet was resolved to make a long courtship of it; but a very few meetings with him got the better of all my resolutions, and he made me engage myself to him.
"If my brother had treated me with good nature, I certainly should have acquainted him with this affair: but he took so little notice of me, and whenever I spoke to him showed such a contempt for talking with girls, that, he being twice my age, I contracted such an awe of him, I really was afraid to tall him of it. I take shame to myself for giving
