pleasures by my eyes, and harass
their inventions for my entertainment, was in less than three weeks
reduced to receive a ticket with professions of obligation; to catch
with eagerness at a compliment; and to watch with all the anxiousness of
dependance, lest any little civility that was paid me should pass
unacknowledged.

Though the negligence of the men was not very pleasing when compared
with vows and adoration, yet it was far more supportable than the
insolence of my own sex. For the first ten months after my return into
the world, I never entered a single house in which the memory of my
downfall was not revived. At one place I was congratulated on my escape
with life; at another I heard of the benefits of early inoculation; by
some I have been told in express terms, that I am not yet without my
charms; others have whispered at my entrance, This is the celebrated
beauty. One told me of a wash that would smooth the skin; and another
offered me her chair that I might not front the light. Some soothed me
with the observation that none can tell how soon my case may be her own;
and some thought it proper to receive me with mournful tenderness,
formal condolence, and consolatory blandishments.

Thus was I every day harassed with all the stratagems of well-bred
malignity; yet insolence was more tolerable than solitude, and I
therefore persisted to keep my time at the doors of my acquaintance,
without gratifying them with any appearance of resentment or depression.
I expected that their exultation would in time vapour away; that the joy
of their superiority would end with its novelty; and that I should be
suffered to glide along in my present form among the nameless multitude,
whom nature never intended to excite envy or admiration, nor enabled to
delight the eye or inflame the heart.

This was naturally to be expected, and this I began to experience. But
when I was no longer agitated by the perpetual ardour of resistance, and
effort of perseverance, I found more sensibly the want of those
entertainments which had formerly delighted me; the day rose upon me
without an engagement; and the evening closed in its natural gloom,
without summoning me to a concert or a ball. None had any care to find
amusements for me, and I had no power of amusing myself. Idleness
exposed me to melancholy, and life began to languish in motionless
indifference.

Misery and shame are nearly allied. It was not without many struggles
that I pre