e then dances in his style, as he does in his gait! To be sure, to be
sure, he must have made the grand tour, and come home by way of
Tipperary.

'And being moreover forbid,' says the prancer, 'to enter into the cruel
subject.'--This prohibition was a mercy to thee, friend Hickman!--But why
cruel subject, if thou knowest not what it is, but conjecturest only from
the disturbance it gives to a girl, that is her mother's disturbance,
will be thy disturbance, and the disturbance, in turn, of every body with
whom she is intimately acquainted, unless I have the humbling of her?

In another letter,* the little fury professes, 'that she will write, and
that no man shall write for her,' as if some medium of that kind had been
proposed. She approves of her fair friend's intention 'to leave me, if
she can be received by her relations. I am a wretch, a foolish wretch.
She hates me for my teasing ways. She has just made an acquaintance with
one who knows a vast deal of my private history.' A curse upon her, and
upon her historiographer!--'The man is really a villain, an execrable
one.' Devil take her!--'Had I a dozen lives, I might have forfeited them
all twenty crimes ago.' An odd way of reckoning, Jack!

* See Letter XXIII. of this volume.

Miss Betterton, Miss Lockyer, are named--the man, (she irreverently
repeats) she again calls a villain. Let me perish, I repeat, if I am
called a villain for nothing!--She 'will have her uncle,' as Miss Harlowe
requests, 'sounded about receiving her. Dorcas is to be attached to her
interest: my letters are to be come at by surprise or trick'--

What thinkest thou of this, Jack?

Miss Howe is alarmed at my attempt to come at a letter of hers.

'Were I to come at the knowledge of her freedoms with my character,' she
says, 'she should be afraid to stir out without a guard.' I would advise
the vixen to get her guard ready.

'I am at the head of a gang of wretches,' [thee, Jack, and thy brother
varlets, she owns she means,] 'who join together to betray innocent
creatures, and to support one another in their villanies.'--What sayest
thou to this, Belford?

'She wonders not at her melancholy reflections for meeting me, for being
forced upon me, and tricked by me.'--I hope, Jack, thou'lt have done
preaching after this!

But she comforts her, 'that she will be both a warning and an example to
all her sex.' I hope the sex will thank me for this!

The nymphs had not time, they