no household employments to prevent
me, will make such a step (if I am forced to take it) less suspected.
And the linen I shall deposit, in pursuance of your kind hint, cannot be
missed.

This custom, although a prisoner, (as I may too truly say,) and neither
visited nor visiting, I continue. We owe to ourselves, and to our sex,
you know, to be always neat; and never to be surprised in a way we
should be pained to be seen in.

Besides, people in adversity (which is the state of trial of every good
quality) should endeavour to preserve laudable customs, that, if sun
shine return, they may not be losers by their trial.

Does it not, moreover, manifest a firmness of mind, in an unhappy
person, to keep hope alive? To hope for better days, is half to deserve
them: for could we have just ground for such a hope, if we did not
resolve to deserve what that hope bids us aspire to?--Then who shall
befriend a person who forsakes herself?

These are reflections by which I sometimes endeavour to support myself.

I know you don't despise my grave airs, although (with a view no doubt
to irradiate my mind in my misfortunes) you rally me upon them. Every
body has not your talent of introducing serious and important lessons,
in such a happy manner as at once to delight and instruct.

What a multitude of contrivances may not young people fall upon, if the
mind be not engaged by acts of kindness and condescension! I am not used
by my friends of late as I always used their servants.

When I was intrusted with the family-management, I always found it
right, as well in policy as generosity, to repose a trust in them. Not
to seem to expect or depend upon justice from them, is in a manner to
bid them to take opportunities, whenever they offer, to be unjust.

Mr. Solmes, (to expatiate on this low, but not unuseful subject,) in his
more trifling solicitudes, would have had a sorry key-keeper in me. Were
I mistress of a family, I would not either take to myself, or give to
servants, the pain of keeping those I had reason to suspect. People low
in station have often minds not sordid. Nay, I have sometimes thought,
that (even take number for number) there are more honest low people,
than honest high. In the one, honest is their chief pride. In the other,
the love of power, of grandeur, of pleasure, mislead; and that and their
ambition induce a paramount pride, which too often swallows up the more
laudable one.

Many of the former would scor