ther.

I have one half of the house to myself; and that the best; for the great
enjoy that least which costs them most: grandeur and use are two things:
the common part is their's; the state part is mine: and here I lord it,
and will lord it, as long as I please; while the two pursy sisters, the
old gouty brother, and the two musty nieces, are stived up in the other
half, and dare not stir for fear of meeting me: whom, (that's the jest
of it,) they have forbidden coming into their apartments, as I have them
into mine. And so I have them all prisoners, while I range about as I
please. Pretty dogs and doggesses to quarrel and bark at me, and yet,
whenever I appear, afraid to pop out of their kennels; or, if out before
they see me, at the sight of me run growling in again, with their flapt
ears, their sweeping dewlaps, and their quivering tails curling inwards.

And here, while I am thus worthily waging war with beetles, drones,
wasps, and hornets, and am all on fire with the rage of slighted love,
thou art regaling thyself with phlegm and rock-water, and art going on
with thy reformation-scheme and thy exultations in my misfortunes!

The devil take thee for an insensible dough-baked varlet! I have no more
patience with thee than with the lady; for thou knowest nothing either of
love or friendship, but art as unworthy of the one, as incapable of the
other; else wouldst thou not rejoice, as thou dost under the grimace of
pity, in my disappointments.

And thou art a pretty fellow, art thou not? to engage to transcribe for
her some parts of my letters written to thee in confidence? Letters that
thou shouldest sooner have parted with thy cursed tongue, than have owned
that thou ever hadst received such: yet these are now to be communicated
to her! But I charge thee, and woe be to thee if it be too late! that
thou do not oblige her with a line of mine.

If thou hast done it, the least vengeance I will take is to break through
my honour given to thee not to visit her, as thou wilt have broken
through thine to me, in communicating letters written under the seal of
friendship.

I am now convinced, too sadly for my hopes, by her letter to my cousin
Charlotte, that she is determined never to have me.

Unprecedented wickedness, she calls mine to her. But how does she know
what love, in its flaming ardour, will stimulate men to do? How does she
know the requisite distinctions of the words she uses in this case?--To
think