hly satisfied
with your conduct hitherto. You shall have no occasion to repent it: And
you shall find, though greatly imperfect, and passionate, on particular
provocations, (which yet I will try to overcome,) that you have not
a brutal or ungenerous husband, who is capable of offering insult for
condescension, or returning evil for good.

I thanked him for these kind rules, and generous assurances: and assured
him, that they had made so much impression on my mind, that these, and
his most agreeable injunctions before given me, and such as he should
hereafter be pleased to give me, should be so many rules for my future
behaviour.

And I am glad of the method I have taken of making a Journal of all that
passes in these first stages of my happiness, because it will sink the
impression still deeper; and I shall have recourse to them for my better
regulation, as often as I shall mistrust my memory.

Let me see: What are the rules I am to observe from this awful lecture?
Why these:

1. That I must not, when he is in great wrath with any body, break in
upon him without his leave. Well, I'll remember it, I warrant. But yet I
think this rule is almost peculiar to himself.

2. That I must think his displeasure the heaviest thing that can befall
me. To be sure I shall.

3. And so that I must not wish to incur it, to save any body else. I'll
be further if I do.

4. That I must never make a compliment to any body at his expense.

5. That I must not be guilty of any acts of wilful meanness. There is
a great deal meant in this; and I'll endeavour to observe it all. To be
sure, the occasion on which he mentions this, explains it; that I must
say nothing, though in anger, that is spiteful or malicious; that is
disrespectful or undutiful, and such-like.

6. That I must bear with him, even when I find him in the wrong. This is
a little hard, as the case may be!

I wonder whether poor Miss Sally Godfrey be living or dead!

7. That I must be as flexible as the reed in the fable, lest, by
resisting the tempest, like the oak, I be torn up by the roots. Well,
I'll do the best I can!--There is no great likelihood, I hope, that
I should be too perverse; yet sure, the tempest will not lay me quite
level with the ground, neither.

8. That the education of young people of condition is generally wrong.
Memorandum; That if any part of children's education fall to my lot, I
never indulge and humour them in things that they ought to be