You have hastily perused the preceding lines, and are straining your eye
forward to my part of the farce; for such it may prove, after all. Well,
then, not to play too long with the curiosity which I know to be excited
and actuated by real friendship, I will relieve it. I think you would
have been pleased to have seen my gravity on this important occasion.
With all the candor and frankness which I was capable of assuming, I
thus answered his long harangue, to which I had listened without
interrupting him: "Self-knowledge, sir, that most important of all
sciences, I have yet to learn. Such have been my situations in life, and
the natural volatility of my temper, that I have looked but little into
my own heart in regard to its future wishes and views. From a scene of
constraint and confinement, ill suited to my years and inclination, I
have just launched into society. My heart beats high in expectation of
its fancied joys. My sanguine imagination paints, in alluring colors,
the charms of youth and freedom, regulated by virtue and innocence. Of
these I wish to partake. While I own myself under obligations for the
esteem which you are pleased to profess for me, and, in return,
acknowledge that neither your person nor manners are disagreeable to me,
I recoil at the thought of immediately forming a connection which must
confine me to the duties of domestic life, and make me dependent for
happiness, perhaps, too, for subsistence, upon a class of people who
will claim the right of scrutinizing every part of my conduct, and, by
censuring those foibles which I am conscious of not having prudence to
avoid, may render me completely miserable.
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