se prescribing varlets will let me, depend
upon it, I go. Nay, Lord M. thinks she ought to permit me one interview.
His opinion has great authority with me--when it squares with my own: and
I have assured him, and my two cousins, that I will behave with all the
decency and respect that man can behave with to the person whom he most
respects. And so I will. Of this, if thou choosest not to go to Belton
mean time, thou shalt be witness.

Colonel Morden, thou hast heard me say, is a man of honour and bravery:--
but Colonel Morden has had his girls, as well as you or I. And indeed,
either openly or secretly, who has not? The devil always baits with a
pretty wench, when he angles for a man, be his age, rank, or degree, what
it will.

I have often heard my beloved speak of the Colonel with great distinction
and esteem. I wish he could make matters a little easier, for her mind's
sake, between the rest of the implacables and herself.

Methinks I am sorry for honest Belton. But a man cannot be ill, or
vapourish, but thou liftest up thy shriek-owl note, and killest him
immediately. None but a fellow, who is for a drummer in death's
forlorn-hope, could take so much delight, as thou dost, in beating a
dead-march with thy goose-quills. Whereas, didst thou but know thine own
talents, thou art formed to give mirth by thy very appearance; and
wouldst make a better figure by half, leading up thy brother-bears at
Hockley in the Hole, to the music of a Scot's bagpipe. Methinks I see
thy clumsy sides shaking, (and shaking the sides of all beholders,) in
these attitudes; thy fat head archly beating time on thy porterly
shoulders, right and left by turns, as I once beheld thee practising to
the horn-pipe at Preston. Thou remembrest the frolick, as I have done
an hundred times; for I never before saw thee appear so much in
character.

But I know what I shall get by this--only that notable observation
repeated, That thy outside is the worst of thee, and mine the best of me.
And so let it be. Nothing thou writest of this sort can I take amiss.

But I shall call thee seriously to account, when I see thee, for the
extracts thou hast given the lady from my letters, notwithstanding what I
said in my last; especially if she continue to refuse me. An hundred
times have I myself known a woman deny, yet comply at last: but, by these
extracts, thou hast, I doubt, made her bar up the door of her heart, as
she used to do her chamber-doo