he same manner.

We neither of us are such fools as to disbelieve a futurity, or to think,
whatever be our practice, that we came hither by chance, and for no end
but to do all the mischief we have it in our power to do. Nor am I
ashamed to own, that in the prayers which my poor uncle makes me read to
him, in the absence of a very good clergyman who regularly attends him, I
do not forget to put in a word or two for myself.

If, Lovelace, thou laughest at me, thy ridicule will be more conformable
to thy actions than to thy belief.--Devils believe and tremble. Canst
thou be more abandoned than they?

And here let me add, with regard to my poor old man, that I often wish
thee present but for one half hour in a day, to see the dregs of a gay
life running off in the most excruciating tortures that the cholic, the
stone, and the surgeon's knife can unitedly inflict, and to hear him
bewail the dissoluteness of his past life, in the bitterest anguish of a
spirit every hour expecting to be called to its last account.--Yet, by
all his confessions, he has not to accuse himself, in sixty-seven years
of life, of half the very vile enormities which you and I have committed
in the last seven only.

I conclude with recommending to your serious consideration all I have
written, as proceeding from the heart and soul of

Your assured friend,
JOHN BELFORD

LETTER XIV

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
TUESDAY AFTERNOON, JUNE 6.

Difficulties still to be got over in procuring this plaguy license. I
ever hated, and ever shall hate, these spiritual lawyers, and their
court.

And now, Jack, if I have not secured victory, I have a retreat.

But hold--thy servant with a letter--

***

A confounded long one, though not a narrative one--Once more in behalf of
this lady?--Lie thee down, oddity! What canst thou write that can have
force upon me at this crisis?--And have I not, as I went along, made thee
to say all that was necessary for thee to say?

***

Yet once more I will take thee up.

Trite, stale, poor, (sayest thou,) are some of my contrivances; that of
the widow particularly!--I have no patience with thee. Had not that
contrivance its effect at that time, for a procrastination? and had I not
then reason to fear, that the lady would find enough to make her dislike
this house? and was it not right (intending what I intended) to lead her
on from time to time with a notion that a house of her own would