her dear baronet, whom she loved with a tenderness and constancy,
even though he was her keeper, and what is yet more, had made her
independent, by a handsome provision for her and hers. I was then in
this vacancy from any regular employ of my person in my way of business,
when one day, Mrs. Cole, in the course of the constant confidence we
lived in, acquainted me that there was one Mr. Barville, who used her
house, just come to town, whom she was not a little perplexed about
providing a suitable companion for; which was indeed a point of
difficulty, as he was under the tyranny of a cruel taste: that of an
ardent desire, not only of being unmercifully whipped himself, but of
whipping others, in such sort, that though he paid extravagantly those
who had the courage and complaisance to submit to his humour, there
were few, delicate as he was in the choice of his subjects, who would
exchange turns with him so terribly at the expense of their skin. But,
what yet increased the oddity of this strange fancy was the gentleman
being young; whereas it generally attacks, it seems, such as are,
through age, obliged to have recourse to this experiment, for quickening
the circulation of their sluggish juices, and determining a conflux of
the spirits of pleasure towards those flagging shrivelly parts, that
rise to life only by virtue of those titillating ardours created by
the discipline of their opposites, with which they have so surprising a
consent.

This Mrs. Cole could not well acquaint me with, in any expectation of
my offering for service: for, sufficiently easy as I was in my
circumstances, it must have been the temptation of an immense interest
indeed, that could have induced me to embrace such a job, neither had I
ever expressed, nor indeed, felt the least impulse or curiosity to know
more of a taste, that promised so much more pain than pleasure to those
that stood in no need of such violent goads: what then should move me
to subscribe myself voluntarily to a party of pain, foreknowing it such?
Why, to tell the plain truth, it was a sudden caprice, a gust of fancy
for trying a new experiment, mixed with the vanity of approving my
personal courage to Mrs. Cole, that determined me, at all risks,
to propose myself to her and relieve her from any farther lookout.
Accordingly, I at once pleased and surprised her, with a frank and
unreserved tender of my person to her and her friend's absolute disposal
on this occasion.

My go