bear who live best, I am confirmed in my
dislike to the state.

Well do your sex contrive to bring us up fools and idiots, in order to
make us bear the yoke you lay upon our shoulders; and that we may not
despise you from our hearts, (as we certainly should, if we were brought
up as you are,) for your ignorance, as much as you often make us do (as
it is) for your insolence.

These, Sir, are some of my notions. And, with these notions, let me
repeat my question, Do you think I ought to marry at all?

If I marry either a sordid or an imperious wretch, can I, do you think,
live with him? And ought a man of a contrary character, for the sake of
either of our reputations, to be plagued with me?

Long did I stand out against all the offers made me, and against all the
persuasions of my mother; and, to tell you the truth, the longer, and
with the more obstinacy, as the person my choice would have first fallen
upon was neither approved by my mother, nor by my dear friend. This
riveted me to my pride, and to my opposition; for although I was
convinced, after a while, that my choice would neither have been prudent
nor happy; and that the specious wretch was not what he had made me
believe he was; yet could I not easily think of any other man; and
indeed, from the detection of him, took a settled aversion to the whole
sex.

At last Mr. Hickman offered himself; a man worthy of a better choice. He
had the good fortune [he thinks it so] to be agreeable (and to make his
proposals agreeable) to my mother.

As to myself; I own, that were I to have chosen a brother, Mr. Hickman
should have been the man; virtuous, sober, sincere, friendly, as he is.
But I wish not to marry; nor knew I the man in the world whom I could
think deserving of my beloved friend. But neither of our parents would
let us live single.

The accursed Lovelace was proposed warmly to her at one time; and, while
she was yet but indifferent to him, they, by ungenerous usage of him,
(for then, Sir, he was not known to be Beelzebub himself,) and by
endeavouring to force her inclinations in favour first of one worthless
man, then of another, in antipathy to him, through her foolish brother's
caprice, turned that indifference (from the natural generosity of her
soul) into a regard which she never otherwise would have had for a man of
his character.

Mr. Hickman was proposed to me. I refused him again and again. He
persisted; my mother his advocate. I told h