d so
perfidiously escaped?

Let me enjoy the thought!

Shall I send this letter?--Thou seest I have left room, if I fail in the
exact imitation of so charming a hand, to avoid too strict a scrutiny.
Do they not both deserve it of me? Seest thou now how the raving girls
threatens her mother? Ought she not to be punished? And can I be a
worse devil, or villain, or monster, that she calls me in the long letter
I enclose (and has called me in her former letters) were I to punish them
both as my vengeance urges me to punish them? And when I have executed
that my vengeance, how charmingly satisfied may they both go down into
the country and keep house together, and have a much better reason than
their pride could give them, for living the single life they have both
seemed so fond of!

I will set about transcribing it this moment, I think. I can resolve
afterwards. Yet what has poor Hickman done to deserve this of me!--But
gloriously would it punish the mother (as well as daughter) for all her
sordid avarice; and for her undutifulness to honest Mr. Howe, whose heart
she actually broke. I am on tiptoe, Jack, to enter upon this project.
Is not one country as good to me as another, if I should be obliged to
take another tour upon it?

***

But I will not venture. Hickman is a good man, they tell me. I love a
good man. I hope one of these days to be a good man myself. Besides, I
have heard within this week something of this honest fellow that shows he
has a soul; when I thought, if he had one, that it lay a little of the
deepest to emerge to notice, except on very extraordinary occasions; and
that then it presently sunk again into its cellula adiposa.--The man is a
plump man.--Didst ever see him, Jack?

But the principal reason that withholds me [for 'tis a tempting project!]
is, for fear of being utterly blown up, if I should not be quick enough
with my letter, or if Miss Howe should deliberate on setting out, to try
her mother's consent first; in which time a letter from my frighted
beauty might reach her; for I have no doubt, wherever she has refuged,
but her first work was to write to her vixen friend. I will therefore go
on patiently; and take my revenge upon the little fury at my leisure.

But in spite of my compassion for Hickman, whose better character is
sometimes my envy, and who is one of those mortals that bring clumsiness
into credit with the mothers, to the disgrace of us clever fellows, and