gorous and
satisfactory execution; for with women, of our turn especially, however
well our hearts may be disposed, there is a controlling part, or
queen-seat in us, that governs itself by its own maxims of state,
amongst which not one is stronger, in practice with it, than, in the
matter of is dues, never to accept the will for the deed.

Mr. Norbert, who was much in this ungracious case, though he professed
to like me extremely, could but seldom consummate the main-joy itself
with me, without such a length and variety of preparations, as were at
once wearisome and inflammatory.

Sometimes he would strip me stark naked on a carpet, by a good fire,
when he would contemplate me almost by the hour, disposing me in all the
figures and attitudes of body that it was susceptible of being viewed in;
kissing me in every part, the most secret and critical one so far
from excepted that it received most of that branch of homage. Then
his touches were so exquisitely wanton, so luxuriously diffused
and penetrative at times, that he had made me perfectly rage with
titillating fires, when, after all, and much ado, he had gained a
short-lived erection, he would perhaps melt it away in a washy sweat, or
a premature abortive effusion, that provokingly mocked my eager desires:
or, if carried home, how faultered and unnervous the execution! how
insufficient the sprinkle of a few heat-drops to extinguish all the
flames he had kindled!

One evening, I cannot help remembering, that returning home from him,
with a spirit he had raised in a circle his wand had proved too weak
to lay, as I turned the corner of a street, I was overtaken by a young
sailor, I was then in that spruce, neat, plain dress, which I
ever affected and perhaps might have, in my trip, a certain air of
restlessness unknown to the composure of cooler thoughts. However, he
seized me as a prize, and without farther ceremony threw his arms round
my neck, and kissed me boisterously and sweetly. I looked at him with a
beginning of anger and indignation at his rudeness, that softened away
into other sentiments as I viewed him: for he was tall, manly carriaged,
handsome of body and face, so that I ended my stare, with asking him,
in a tone turned to tenderness, what he meant; at which, with the same
frankness and vivacity as he had begun with me, he proposed treating me
with a glass of wine. Now, certain it is, that had I been in a calmer
state of blood than I was, had I not been