letter to her father by a particular hand this
morning.

Mrs. Walton the milliner has also just now acquainted Mrs. Smith, that
her husband had a letter brought by a special messenger from Parson
Brand, within this half hour, enclosing the copy of one he had written to
Mr. John Harlowe, recanting his officious one.

And as all these, and the copy of the lady's letter to Col. Morden, will
be with them pretty much at a time, the devil's in the family if they are
not struck with a remorse that shall burst open the double-barred doors
of their hearts.

Will. engages to reach you with this (late as it will be) before you go
to rest. He begs that I will testify for him the hour and the minute I
shall give it him. It is just half an hour after ten.

I pretend to be (now by use) the swiftest short-hand writer in England,
next to yourself. But were matter to arise every hour to write upon, and
I had nothing else to do, I cannot write so fast as you expect. And let
it be remembered, that your servants cannot bring letters or messages
before they are written or sent.

LETTER LVIII

DR. H. TO JAMES HARLOWE, SENIOR, ESQ.
LONDON, SEPT. 4.

SIR,

If I may judge of the hearts of other parents by my own, I cannot doubt
but you will take it well to be informed that you have yet an opportunity
to save yourself and family great future regret, by dispatching hither
some one of it with your last blessing, and your lady's, to the most
excellent of her sex.

I have some reason to believe, Sir, that she has been represented to you
in a very different light from the true one. And this it is that induces
me to acquaint you, that I think her, on the best grounds, absolutely
irreproachable in all her conduct which has passed under my eye, or come
to my ear; and that her very misfortunes are made glorious to her, and
honourable to all that are related to her, by the use she has made of
them; and by the patience and resignation with which she supports herself
in a painful, lingering, and dispiriting decay! and by the greatness of
mind with which she views her approaching dissolution. And all this from
proper motives; from motives in which a dying saint might glory.

She knows not that I write. I must indeed acknowledge, that I offered to
do so some days ago, and that very pressingly: nor did she refuse me from
obstinacy--she seemed not to know what that is--but desired me to forbear
for two days only, in hopes that her newl