had like to have
lost my dinner by it. I know not what humour you were in when you writ
it; but Mr. Arbry's prophecy and the falling down of the form did a
little discompose my gravity. But I quickly recovered myself with
thinking that you deserved to be chid for going where you knew you must
of necessity lose your time. In earnest, I had a little scruple when I
went with you thither, and but that I was assured it was too late to go
any whither else, and believed it better to hear an ill sermon than
none, I think I should have missed his _Belles remarques_. You had
repented you, I hope, of that and all other your faults before you
thought of dying.

What a satisfaction you had found out to make me for the injuries you
say you have done me! And yet I cannot tell neither (though 'tis not the
remedy I should choose) whether that were not a certain one for all my
misfortunes; for, sure, I should have nothing then to persuade me to
stay longer where they grow, and I should quickly take a resolution of
leaving them and the world at once. I agree with you, too, that I do not
see any great likelihood of the change of our fortunes, and that we have
much more to wish than to hope for; but 'tis so common a calamity that I
dare not murmur at it; better people have endured it, and I can give no
reason why (almost) all are denied the satisfaction of disposing
themselves to their own desires, but that it is a happiness too great
for this world, and might endanger one's forgetting the next; whereas if
we are crossed in that which only can make the world pleasing to us, we
are quickly tired with the length of our journey and the disquiet of our
inns, and long to be at home. One would think it were I who had heard
the three sermons and were trying to make a fourth; these are truths
that might become a pulpit better than Mr. Arbry's predictions. But lest
you should think I have as many worms in my head as he, I'll give over
in time, and tell you how far Mr. Luke and I are acquainted. He lives
within three or four miles of me, and one day that I had been to visit a
lady that is nearer him than me, as I came back I met a coach with some
company in't that I knew, and thought myself obliged to salute. We all
lighted and met, and I found more than I looked for by two damsels and
their squires. I was afterwards told they were of the Lukes, and
possibly this man might be there, or else I never saw him; for since
these times we have had no comme