suitors of her own clime and complexion, she saw none whom she could
affect: for this noble lady, who regarded the mind more than the
features of men, with a singularity rather to be admired than imitated,
had chosen for the object of her affections, a Moor, a black, whom her
father loved, and often invited to his house.

Neither is Desdemona to be altogether condemned for the unsuitableness
of the person whom she selected for her lover. Bating that Othello was
black, the noble Moor wanted nothing which might recommend him to the
affections of the greatest lady. He was a soldier, and a brave one; and
by his conduct in bloody wars against the Turks, had risen to the rank
of general in the Venetian service, and was esteemed and trusted by the
state.

He had been a traveller, and Desdemona (as is the manner of ladies)
loved to hear him tell the story of his adventures, which he would run
through from his earliest recollection; the battles, sieges, and
encounters, which he had passed through; the perils he had been exposed
to by land and by water; his hair-breadth escapes, when he had entered
a breach, or marched up to the mouth of a cannon; and how he had been
taken prisoner by the insolent enemy, and sold to slavery; how he
demeaned himself in that state, and how he escaped: all these accounts,
added to the narration of the strange things he had seen in foreign
countries, the vast wilderness and romantic caverns, the quarries, the
rocks and mountains, whose heads are in the clouds; of the savage
nations, the cannibals who are man-eaters, and a race of people in
Africa whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders: these travellers'
stories would so enchain the attention of Desdemona, that if she were
called off at any time by household affairs, she would despatch with all
haste that business, and return, and with a greedy ear devour Othello's
discourse. And once he took advantage of a pliant hour, and drew from
her a prayer, that he would tell her the whole story of his life at
large, of which she had heard so much, but only by parts: to which he
consented, and beguiled her of many a tear, when he spoke of some
distressful stroke which his youth had suffered.

His story being done, she gave him for his pains a world of sighs: she
swore a pretty oath, that it was all passing strange, and pitiful,
wondrous pitiful: she wished (she said) she had not heard it, yet she
wished that heaven had made her such a man; and then she