us respect for
Mr. Hickman; more by half than I can have in the other. The vein is
opened--Shall I let it flow? How difficult to withstand constitutional
foibles!

Hickman is certainly a man more in your taste than any of those who have
hitherto been brought to address you. He is mighty sober, mighty grave,
and all that. Then you have told me, that he is your favourite. But that
is because he is my mother's perhaps. The man would certainly rejoice at
the transfer; or he must be a greater fool than I take him to be.

O but your fierce lover would knock him o' the head--I forgot
that!--What makes me incapable of seriousness when I write about
Hickman?--Yet the man so good a sort of man in the main!--But who is
perfect? This is one of my foibles: and it is something for you to chide
me for.

You believe me to be very happy in my prospect in relation to him:
because you are so very unhappy in the foolish usage you meet with, you
are apt (as I suspect) to think that tolerable which otherwise would be
far from being so. I dare say, you would not, with all your grave airs,
like him for yourself; except, being addressed by Solmes and him, you
were obliged to have one of them.--I have given you a test. Let me see
what you will say to it.

For my own part, I confess to you, that I have great exceptions to
Hickman. He and wedlock never yet once entered into my head at one time.
Shall I give you my free thoughts of him?--Of his best and his worst;
and that as if I were writing to one who knows him not?--I think I will.
Yet it is impossible I should do it gravely. The subject won't bear to
be so treated in my opinion. We are not come so far as that yet, if ever
we shall: and to do it in another strain, ill becomes my present real
concern for you.

*****

Here I was interrupted on the honest man's account. He has been here
these two hours--courting the mother for the daughter, I suppose--yet
she wants no courting neither: 'Tis well one of us does; else the man
would have nothing but halcyon; and be remiss, and saucy of course.

He was going. His horses at the door. My mother sent for me down,
pretending to want to say something to me.

Something she said when I came that signified nothing--Evidently, for no
reason called me, but to give me an opportunity to see what a fine bow
her man could make; and that she might wish me a good night. She knows
I am not over ready to oblige him with my company, if I happen to be
othe