lled by a Man_. You Men are Writers, and can represent us Women
as Unbecoming as you please in your Works, while we are unable to
return the Injury. You have twice or thrice observed in your
Discourse, that Hypocrisy is the very Foundation of our Education; and
that an Ability to dissemble our affections, is a professed Part of
our Breeding. These, and such other Reflections, are sprinkled up and
down the Writings of all Ages, by Authors, who leave behind them
Memorials of their Resentment against the Scorn of particular Women,
in Invectives against the whole Sex. Such a Writer, I doubt not, was
the celebrated _Petronius_, who invented the pleasant Aggravations of
the Frailty of the _Ephesian_ Lady; but when we consider this Question
between the Sexes, which has been either a Point of Dispute or
Raillery ever since there were Men and Women, let us take Facts from
plain People, and from such as have not either Ambition or Capacity to
embellish their Narrations with any Beauties of Imagination. I was the
other Day amusing myself with _Ligon's_ Account of _Barbadoes_; and,
in Answer to your well-wrought Tale, I will give you (as it dwells
upon my Memory) out of that honest Traveller, in his fifty fifth page,
the History of _Inkle_ and _Yarico_. [2]

Mr. _Thomas Inkle_ of _London_, aged twenty Years, embarked in the
_Downs_, on the good Ship called the 'Achilles', bound for the _West
Indies_, on the 16th of June 1647, in order to improve his Fortune by
Trade and Merchandize. Our Adventurer was the third Son of an eminent
Citizen, who had taken particular Care to instill into his Mind an
early Love of Gain, by making him a perfect Master of Numbers, and
consequently giving him a quick View of Loss and Advantage, and
preventing the natural Impulses of his Passions, by Prepossession
towards his Interests. With a Mind thus turned, young _Inkle_ had a
Person every way agreeable, a ruddy Vigour in his Countenance,
Strength in his Limbs, with Ringlets of fair Hair loosely flowing on
his Shoulders. It happened, in the Course of the Voyage, that the
_Achilles_, in some Distress, put into a Creek on the Main of
_America_, in search of Provisions. The Youth, who is the Hero of my
Story, among others, went ashore on this Occasion. From their first
Landing they were observed by a Party of _Indians_, who hid themselves
in the Woods for that Purpose. The _English_ unadvi