d say, Let not any one reproach us,
Jack: there is no wickedness like the wickedness of a woman.*

* Eccles. xxv. 19.

A bad education was the preparative, it must be confessed; and for this
Sally Martin had reason to thank her parents; as they had reason to thank
themselves for what followed: but, had she not met with a Lovelace, she
had avoided a Sinclair; and might have gone on at the common rate of
wives so educated, and been the mother of children turned out to take
their chance in the world, as she was; so many lumps of soft wax, fit to
take any impression that the first accidents gave them; neither happy,
nor making happy; every thing but useful, and well off, if not extremely
miserable.

POLLY HORTON was the daughter of a gentlewoman, well descended; whose
husband, a man of family and of honour, was a Captain in the Guards.

He died when Polly was about nine years of age, leaving her to the care
of her mother, a lively young lady of about twenty-six; with a genteel
provision for both.

Her mother was extremely fond of her Polly; but had it not in herself to
manifest the true, the genuine fondness of a parent, by a strict and
guarded education; dressing out, and visiting, and being visited by the
gay of her own sex, and casting her eye abroad, as one very ready to try
her fortune again in the married state.

This induced those airs, and a love to those diversions, which make a
young widow, of so lively a turn, the unfittest tutoress in the world,
even to her own daughter.

Mrs. Horton herself having had an early turn to music, and that sort of
reading which is but an earlier debauchery for young minds, preparative
to the grosser at riper years; to wit, romances and novels, songs and
plays, and those without distinction, moral or immoral, she indulged her
daughter in the same taste; and at those hours, when they could not take
part in the more active and lively amusements and kill-times, as some
call them, used to employ Miss to read to her, happy enough, in her own
imagination, that while she was diverting her own ears, and sometimes, as
the piece was, corrupting her own heart, and her child's too, she was
teaching Miss to read, and improve her mind; for it was the boast of
every tea-table half-hour, That Miss Horton, in propriety, accent, and
emphasis, surpassed all the young ladies her age; and, at other times,
complimenting the pleased mother--Bless me, Madam, with what a surprising
grace Miss Hort