verity and humble her a little.

Nothing more effectually brings down a proud spirit, than a sense of
lying under pecuniary obligations. This has always made me solicitous
to avoid laying myself under any such: yet, sometimes, formerly, have
I been put to it, and cursed the tardy resolution of the quarterly
periods. And yet I ever made shift to avoid anticipation: I never would
eat the calf in the cow's belly, as Lord M.'s phrase is: for what is
that, but to hold our lands upon tenant-courtesy, the vilest of all
tenures? To be denied a fox-chace, for breaking down a fence upon my own
grounds? To be clamoured at for repairs studied for, rather than really
wanted? To be prated to by a bumpkin with his hat on, and his arms
folded, as if he defied your expectations of that sort; his foot firmly
fixed, as if upon his own ground, and you forced to take his arch leers,
and stupid gybes; he intimating, by the whole of his conduct, that he
had had it in his power to oblige you, and, if you behave civilly, may
oblige you again? I, who think I have a right to break every man's head
I pass by, if I like not his looks, to bear this!--No more could I do
it, then I could borrow of an insolent uncle, or inquisitive aunt, who
would thence think themselves entitled to have an account of all my life
and actions laid before them for their review and censure.

My charmer, I see, has a pride like my own: but she has no distinction
in her pride: nor knows the pretty fool that there is nothing nobler,
nothing more delightful, than for loves to be conferring and receiving
obligations from each other. In this very farm-yard, to give thee a
familiar instance, I have more than once seen this remark illustrated. A
strutting rascal of a cock have I beheld chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck-ing
his mistress to him, when he has found a single barley-corn, taking it
up with his bill, and letting it drop five or six times, still repeating
his chucking invitation: and when two or three of his feathered ladies
strive who shall be the first for it [O Jack! a cock is a grand signor
of a bird!] he directs the bill of the foremost to it; and when she has
got the dirty pearl, he struts over her with an erected crest, cling
round her with dropt wings, sweeping the dust in humble courtship: while
the obliged she, half-shy, half-willing, by her cowering tail, prepared
wings, yet seemingly affrighted eyes, and contracted neck, lets one see
that she knows the barley-corn w