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I could place confidence, desirable, and in fact necessary to me; and as this young woman's misfortunes had placed her in such circumstances, that I had no obstacles to surmount on the score of delicacy, I proposed to her, after a few days' acquaintance, that we should live together; to which, as she was heartily tired of her present course of life, she willingly consented. She knew enough of the world from her late experience, to surmise in what manner I obtained my living, of which, however, to avoid all duplicity, I fully possessed her. Having informed my landlord, that my wife, whom I had not before mentioned to him, was arrived in town from a visit she had been paying in the country, I accordingly took her home; and in a very few days we had arranged a pretty snug system of domestic economy, and provided every requisite for the family life I meant in future to live. My companion was the daughter of an industrious mechanic, who, having a numerous offspring, had only been enabled to give her a common education; but her mother had instructed her in the duties of housekeeping, and she was perfectly conversant in all the qualities requisite to form a good wife. She was about nineteen years of age, agreeable in her person, and of the sweetest disposition imaginable; and what was most gratifying, the company she had latterly mixed with, and the disgusting examples before her eyes, had not been able to eradicate an innate modesty which she natu-
