"
"You will wonder how I could behave so coolly as to escape all
discovery so long from a lady so watchful as my mother, and from the
apprehensiveness of the girl.
"But, to say nothing of her tender years, and that my love was not of
this bashful sort, I was not absolutely determined, so great was my
pride, that I ought to think her worthy of being my _mistress_, when
I had not much reason, as I thought, to despair of prevailing upon
persons of higher birth (were I disposed to try) to live with me upon
my own terms. My pride, therefore, kept my passion at bay, as I may
say: so far was I from imagining I should ever be brought to what has
since happened! But to proceed:
"Hitherto my mind was taken up with the beauties of her person only.
My EYE had drawn my HEART after it, without giving myself any trouble
about that sense and judgment which my mother was always praising in
her Pamela, as exceeding her years and opportunities: but an occasion
happened, which, though slight in itself, took the HEAD into the
party, and I thought of her, young as she was, with a distinction,
that before I had not for her. It was this:
"Being with my mother in her closet, who was talking to me on the old
subject, _matrimony_, I saw Pamela's commonplace book, as I may call
it; in which, by her lady's direction, from time to time, she had
transcribed from the Bible, and other good books, such passages
as most impressed her as she read--A method, I take it, my dear"
(_turning to me_), "of great service to you, as it initiated you into
writing with that freedom and ease, which shine in your saucy letters
and journals; and to which my present fetters are not a little owing:
just as pedlars catch monkeys in the baboon kingdoms, provoking the
attentive fools, by their own example, to put on shoes and stockings,
till the apes of imitation, trying to do the like, entangle their
feet, and so cannot escape upon the boughs of the tree of liberty, on
which before they were wont to hop and skip about, and play a thousand
puggish tricks.
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