gets clear, but embarrassed the
person for ever; but the merchant had his estate continually flowing;
and upon this he named me merchants who lived in more real splendour and
spent more money than most of the noblemen in England could singly
expend, and that they still grew immensely rich.

He went on to tell me that even the tradesmen in London, speaking of the
better sort of trades, could spend more money in their families, and yet
give better fortunes to their children, than, generally speaking, the
gentry of England from L1000 a year downward could do, and yet grow rich
too.

The upshot of all this was to recommend to me rather the bestowing my
fortune upon some eminent merchant, who lived already in the first
figure of a merchant, and who, not being in want or scarcity of money,
but having a flourishing business and a flowing cash, would at the first
word settle all my fortune on myself and children, and maintain me like
a queen.

This was certainly right, and had I taken his advice, I had been really
happy; but my heart was bent upon an independency of fortune, and I told
him I knew no state of matrimony but what was at best a state of
inferiority, if not of bondage; that I had no notion of it; that I lived
a life of absolute liberty now, was free as I was born, and having a
plentiful fortune, I did not understand what coherence the words "honour
and obey" had with the liberty of a free woman; that I knew no reason
the men had to engross the whole liberty of the race, and make the
woman, notwithstanding any disparity of fortune, be subject to the laws
of marriage, of their own making; that it was my misfortune to be a
woman, but I was resolved it should not be made worse by the sex; and,
seeing liberty seemed to be the men's property, I would be a man-woman,
for, as I was born free, I would die so.

Sir Robert smiled, and told me I talked a kind of Amazonian language;
that he found few women of my mind, or that, if they were, they wanted
resolution to go on with it; that, notwithstanding all my notions, which
he could not but say had once some weight in them, yet he understood I
had broke in upon them, and had been married. I answered, I had so; but
he did not hear me say that I had any encouragement from what was past
to make a second venture; that I was got well out of the toil, and if I
came in again I should have nobody to blame but myself.

Sir Robert laughed heartily at me, but gave over offering any mo