is the mother of
health. And let me tell you, Betty, if I had a better appetite, and
were to encourage it, with so little rest, and so much distress and
persecution, I don't think I should be able to preserve my reason.

There's no inconvenience but has its convenience, said Betty, giving me
proverb for proverb. But what is the other, Madam?

That the pleasures of the mighty are not obtained by the tears of the
poor. It is but reasonable, therefore, methinks, that the plenty of
the one should be followed by distempers; and that the indigence of the
other should be attended with that health, which makes all its other
discomforts light on the comparison. And hence a third proverb, Betty,
since you are an admirer of proverbs: Better a hare-foot than none at
all; that is to say, than not to be able to walk.

She was mightily taken with what I said: See, returned she, what a fine
thing scholarship is!--I, said she, had always, from a girl, a taste for
reading, though it were but in Mother Goose, and concerning the fairies
[and then she took genteelly a pinch of snuff]: could but my parents
have let go as fast as I pulled, I should have been a very happy
creature.

Very likely, you would have made great improvements, Betty: but as it
is, I cannot say, but since I had the favour of your attendance in this
intimate manner, I have heard smarter things from you, than I have heard
at table from some of my brother's fellow-collegians.

Your servant, dear Miss; dropping me one of her best courtesies: so
fine a judge as you are!--It is enough to make one very proud. Then with
another pinch--I cannot indeed but say, bridling upon it, that I have
heard famous scholars often and often say very silly things: things
I should be ashamed myself to say; but I thought they did it out of
humility, and in condescension to those who had not their learning.

That she might not be too proud, I told her, I would observe, that the
liveliness or quickness she so happily discovered in herself, was not
so much an honour to her, as what she owed to her sex; which, as I had
observed in many instances, had great advantages over the other, in all
the powers that related to imagination. And hence, Mrs. Betty, you'll
take notice, as I have of late had opportunity to do, that your own
talent at repartee and smartness, when it has something to work upon,
displays itself to more advantage, than could well be expected from one
whose friends, to speak in yo