to do, not I!--God forgive me, but I am very
impatient! I wish--But I don't know what to wish, without a sin!--Yet I
wish it would please God to take me to his mercy!--I can meet with none
here--What a world is this!--What is there in it desirable? The good we
hope for, so strangely mixed, that one knows not what to wish for! And
one half of mankind tormenting the other, and being tormented themselves
in tormenting!--For here is this my particular case, my relations cannot
be happy, though they make me unhappy!--Except my brother and sister,
indeed--and they seem to take delight in and enjoy the mischief they
make.

But it is time to lay down my pen, since my ink runs nothing but gall.

LETTER IX

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE FRIDAY MORNING, SIX O'CLOCK

Mrs. Betty tells me, there is now nothing talked of but of my going
to my uncle Antony's. She has been ordered, she says, to get ready to
attend me thither: and, upon my expressing my averseness to go, had the
confidence to say, That having heard me often praise the romanticness
of the place, she was astonished (her hands and eyes lifted up) that I
should set myself against going to a house so much in my taste.

I asked if this was her own insolence, or her young mistress's
observation?

She half-astonished me by her answer: That it was hard she could not say
a good thing, without being robbed of the merit of it.

As the wench looked as if she really thought she had said a good thing,
without knowing the boldness of it, I let it pass. But, to say the
truth, this creature has surprised me on many occasions with her
smartness: for, since she has been employed in this controuling office,
I have discovered a great deal of wit in her assurance, which I never
suspected before. This shews, that insolence is her talent: and that
Fortune, in placing her as a servant to my sister, had not done so
kindly by her as Nature; for that she would make a better figure as her
companion. And indeed I can't help thinking sometimes, that I myself was
better fitted by Nature to be the servant of both, than the mistress of
the one, or the servant of the other. And within these few months past,
Fortune has acted by me, as if she were of the same mind.

FRIDAY, TEN O'CLOCK

Going down to my poultry-yard, just now, I heard my brother and sister
and that Solmes laughing and triumphing together. The high yew-hedge
between us, which divides the yard from the garden, hindere