Mary Wollstonecraft Part 17

He was as cold in his conduct as in his philosophy. He maintained in the various relations of life an imperturbable calmness. But it was not that of a Goethe, who knows how to harmonize pa.s.sion and intellect; it was that of a man in whom the former is an unknown quant.i.ty. He was always methodical in his work. Great as his interest in his subject might be, his ardor was held within bounds. There were no long vigils spent wrestling with thought, or days and weeks pa.s.sed alone and locked in his study that nothing might interfere with the flow of ideas, unless, as happened occasionally, he was working against time. He wrote from nine till one, and then, when he found his brain confused by this amount of labor, he readily reduced the number of his working hours. Literary composition was undertaken by him with the same placidity with which another man might devote himself to book-keeping. His moral code was characterized by the same cool calculation. He had early decided that usefulness to his fellow-creatures was the only thing which made life worth living. It is doubtful whether any other human being would have set about fulfilling this object as he did. He writes of himself:--

"No man could be more desirous than I was of adopting a practice conformable to my principles, as far as I could do so without affording reasonable ground of offence to any other person. I was anxious not to spend a penny on myself which I did not imagine calculated to render me a more capable servant of the public; and as I was averse to the expenditure of money, so I was not inclined to earn it but in small portions. I considered the disburs.e.m.e.nt of money for the benefit of others as a very difficult problem, which he who has the possession of it is bound to solve in the best manner he can, but which affords small encouragement to any one to acquire it who has it not. The plan, therefore, I resolved on was leisure,--a leisure to be employed in deliberate composition, and in the pursuit of such attainments as afforded me the most promise to render me useful. For years I scarcely did anything at home or abroad without the inquiry being uppermost in my mind whether I could be better employed for general benefit."

He was equally uncompromising in his friends.h.i.+ps. His feelings towards his friends were always ruled by his sense of justice. He was the first to come forward with substantial help in their hour of need, but he was also the first to tell them the truth, even though it might be unpleasant, when he thought it his duty to do so. His unselfishness is shown in his conduct during the famous state trials, in which Holcroft, his most intimate friend, Horne Tooke, and several other highly prized acquaintances, were accused of high treason. His boldly avowed revolutionary principles made him a marked man, but he did all that was in his power to defend them. He expressed in the columns of the "Morning Chronicle" his unqualified opinion of the atrocity of the proceedings against them; and throughout the trials he stood by the side of the prisoners, though by so doing he ran the risk of being arrested with them. But if his friends asked his a.s.sistance when it did not seem to him that they deserved it, he was as fearless in withholding it. A Jew money-lender, John King by name, at whose house he dined frequently, was arrested on some charge connected with his business. He appealed to G.o.dwin to appear in court and give evidence in his favor; whereupon the latter wrote to him, not only declining, but forcibly explaining that he declined because he could not conscientiously attest to his, the Jew's, moral character. There was no ill-will on his part, and he continued to dine amicably with King. Engrossed as he was with his own work, he could still find time to read a ma.n.u.script for Mrs. Inchbald, or a play for Holcroft, but when he did so, he was very plain-spoken in pointing out their faults. He incurred the former's displeasure by correcting some grammatical errors in a story she had submitted to him, and he deeply wounded the latter by his unmerciful abuse of the "Lawyer." "You come with a sledge-hammer of criticism," Holcroft said to him on this occasion, "describe it [the play] as absolutely contemptible, tell me it must be d.a.m.ned, or, if it should escape, that it cannot survive five nights." Yet his affection for Holcroft was unwavering. The conflicting results to which his honesty sometimes led are strikingly set forth in his relations to Thomas Cooper, a distant cousin, who at one time lived with him as pupil. He studied attentively the boy's character, and did his utmost to treat him gently and kindly, but, on the other hand, he expressed in his presence his opinion of him in language harsh enough to justify his pupil's indignation. It is more than probable that this same frankness was one of the causes of his many quarrels--_demeles_, he calls them in his diary--with his most devoted friends. His sincerity, however, invariably triumphed, and these were always mere pa.s.sing storms.

He was pa.s.sionless even in relations which usually arouse warmth in the most phlegmatic natures. He was a good son and brother, yet so undemonstrative that his manner pa.s.sed at times for indifference. Though in beliefs and sentiments he had drifted far apart from his mother, he never let this fact interfere with his filial respect and duty; and her long and many letters to him are proofs of his unfailing kindness for her. Men more affectionate than he might have rebelled against her maternal sermons. He never did. But the good lady had occasion to object to his coldness. In one of her letters she asks him why he cannot call her "Honored Mother" as well as "Madam," by which t.i.tle he addressed her, adding navely that "it would be full as agreeable." He was always willing to look out for the welfare of his brothers, two of whom were somewhat disreputable characters, and of his sister Hannah, who lived in London. With the latter he was on particularly friendly terms, and saw much of her, yet Mrs. Sothren--the cousin who had been such a help to him in his early years--reproves him for writing of her as "Miss G.o.dwin"

instead of "sister," and fears lest this may be a sign that his brotherly affection, once great, had abated.

He seems at one time to have thought that he could provide himself with a wife in the same manner in which he managed his other affairs. He imagined that in contracting such a relations.h.i.+p, love was no more indispensable than a heroine was to the interest of a novel. He proposed that his sister Hannah should choose a wife for him; and she, in all seriousness, set about complying with his request. In a spirit as business-like as his, she decided upon a friend, calculated she was sure to meet his requirements, and then sent him a list of her merits, much as one might write a recommendation of a governess or a cook. Her letter on the subject is so unique, and it is so impossible that it should have been written to any one but G.o.dwin, that it is well worth while quoting part of it. She sent him a note of introduction to the lady in question, who, she writes,--

"... is in every sense formed to make one of your disposition really happy. She has a pleasing voice, with which she accompanies her musical instrument with judgment. She has an easy politeness in her manners, neither free nor reserved. She is a good housekeeper and a good economist, and yet of a generous disposition. As to her internal accomplishments, I have reason to speak still more highly of them; good sense without vanity, a penetrating judgment without a disposition to satire, good nature and humility, with about as much religion as my William likes, struck me with a wish that she was my William's wife. I have no certain knowledge of her fortune, but that I leave for you to learn. I only know her father has been many years engaged in an employment which brings in 500 or 600 per annum, and Miss Gay is his only child."

Not even this report could kindle the philosophical William into warmth.

He waited many months before he called upon this paragon, and when he finally saw her, he failed to be enraptured according to Hannah's expectations. "Poor Miss Gay," as the G.o.dwins subsequently called her, never received a second visit.

When it came to the point he found that something depended upon himself, and that he could not be led by his sister's choice, satisfactory as it might be. That he should for a moment have supposed such a step possible is the more surprising, because he afterwards showed himself to be not only fond of the society of women, but unusually nice and discriminating in selecting it. His women friends were all famous either for beauty or cleverness. Before his marriage he was on terms of intimacy with Mrs.

Inchbald, with Amelia Alderson, soon to become Mrs. Opie, and with the beautiful Mrs. Reveley, whose interest in politics and desire for knowledge were to him greater charms than her personal attractions.

Notwithstanding his unimpa.s.sioned nature, William G.o.dwin was never a philosophical Aloysius of Gonzaga, to voluntarily blind himself to feminine beauty.

Indeed, there must have been beneath all his coldness a substratum of warm and strong feeling. He possessed to a rare degree the power of making friends and of giving sympathy to his fellow-beings. The man who can command the affection of others, and enter into their emotions, must know how to feel himself. It was for more than his intellect that he was loved by men like Holcroft and Josiah Wedgwood, like Coleridge and Lamb, and that he was sought after by beautiful and clever women. His talents alone would not have won the hearts of young men, and yet he invariably made friends with those who came under his influence. Willis Webb and Thomas Cooper, who, in his earlier London life, lived with him as pupils, not only respected but loved him, and gave him their confidence. In a later generation, youthful enthusiasts, of whom Bulwer and Sh.e.l.ley are the most notable, looked upon G.o.dwin as the chief apostle in the cause of humanity, and, beginning by admiring him as a philosopher, finished by loving him as a man. Those who know him only through his works or by reading his biography, cannot altogether understand how it was that he thus attracted and held the affections of so many men and women. But the truth is that, while G.o.dwin was naturally a man of an uncommonly cold temperament, much of his emotional insensibility was artificially produced by his puritanical training. He was perfectly honest when in his philosophy of life he banished the pa.s.sions from his calculations. He was so thoroughly schooled in stifling emotion and its expression, that he thought himself incapable of pa.s.sional excitement, and, reasoning from his own experience, failed to appreciate its importance in shaping the course of human affairs. But it may be that people brought into personal contact with him felt that beneath his pa.s.sive exterior there was at least the possibility of pa.s.sion. Mary Wollstonecraft was the first to develop this possibility into certainty, and to arouse G.o.dwin to a consciousness of its existence. She revolutionized not only his life, but his social doctrines. Through her he discovered the flaw in his arguments, and then honestly confessed his mistake to the world. A few years after her death he wrote in the Introduction to "St. Leon:"--

"... I think it necessary to say on the present occasion ... that for more than four years I have been anxious for opportunity and leisure to modify some of the earlier chapters of that work ["Political Justice"] in conformity to the sentiments inculcated in this. Not that I see cause to make any change respecting the principle of justice, or anything else fundamental to the system there delivered; but that I apprehend domestic and private affections inseparable from the nature of man, and from what may be styled the culture of the heart, and am fully persuaded that they are not incompatible with a profound and active sense of justice in the mind of him that cherishes them."

When G.o.dwin met Mary, after her desertion by Imlay, he was forty years of age, in the full prime and vigor of his intellect, and in the height of his fame. She was thirty-seven, only three years his junior. She was the cleverest woman in England. Her talents had matured, and grief had made her strong. She was strikingly handsome. She had, by her struggles and sufferings, acquired what she calls in her "Rights of Women" a _physionomie_. Even Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Reveley, hard as life had gone with them, had never approached the depth of misery which she had fathomed. The eventful meeting took place in the month of January, 1796, shortly after Mary had returned from her travels in the North. Miss Hayes invited G.o.dwin to come to her house one evening when Mary expected to be there. He accepted her invitation without hesitation, but evinced no great eagerness.

"I will do myself the pleasure of waiting on you Friday," he wrote, "and shall be happy to meet Mrs. Wollstonecraft, of whom I know not that I ever said a word of harm, and who has frequently amused herself with depreciating me. But I trust you acknowledge in me the reality of a habit upon which I pique myself, that I speak of the qualities of others uninfluenced by personal considerations, and am as prompt to do justice to an enemy as to a friend."

The meeting was more propitious than their first some few years earlier had been. G.o.dwin had, with others, heard her sad story, and felt sorry for her, and perhaps admired her for her bold practical application of his principles. This was better than the positive dislike with which she had once inspired him. But still his feeling for her was negative. He would probably never have made an effort to see her again. What Mary thought of him has not been recorded. But she must have been favorably impressed, for when she came back to London from her trip to Berks.h.i.+re, she called upon him in his lodgings in Somer's Town. He, in the mean time, had read her "Letters from Norway," and they had given him a higher respect for her talents. The inaccuracies and the roughness of style which had displeased him in her earlier works had disappeared. There was no fault to be found with the book, but much to be said in its praise.

Once she had pleased him intellectually, he began to discover her other attractions, and to enjoy being with her. Her conversation, instead of wearying him, as it once had, interested him. He no longer thought her forward and conceited, but succ.u.mbed to her personal charms. How great these were can be learned from the following description of her character written by Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, who obtained her knowledge from her mother's intimate acquaintances. She says:--

"Mary Wollstonecraft was one of those beings who appear once perhaps in a generation to gild humanity with a ray which no difference of opinion nor chance of circ.u.mstance can cloud. Her genius was undeniable. She had been bred in the hard school of adversity, and having experienced the sorrows entailed on the poor and the oppressed, an earnest desire was kindled in her to diminish these sorrows. Her sound understanding, her intrepidity, her sensibility and eager sympathy, stamped all her writings with force and truth, and endowed them with a tender charm which enchants while it enlightens. She was one whom all loved who had ever seen her. Many years are pa.s.sed since that beating heart has been laid in the cold, still grave, but no one who has ever seen her speaks of her without enthusiastic veneration. Did she witness an act of injustice, she came boldly forward to point it out and induce its reparation; was there discord between friends or relatives, she stood by the weaker party, and by her earnest appeals and kindliness awoke latent affection, and healed all wounds. 'Open as day to melting charity,' with a heart brimful of generous affection, yearning for sympathy, she had fallen on evil days, and her life had been one course of hards.h.i.+p, poverty, lonely struggle, and bitter disappointment.

"G.o.dwin met her at the moment when she was deeply depressed by the ingrat.i.tude of one utterly incapable of appreciating her excellence; who had stolen her heart, and availed himself of her excessive and thoughtless generosity and lofty independence of character, to plunge her in difficulties and then desert her.

Difficulties, worldly difficulties, indeed, she set at naught, compared with her despair of good, her confidence betrayed, and when once she could conquer the misery that clung to her heart, she struggled cheerfully to meet the poverty that was her inheritance, and to do her duty by her darling child."

G.o.dwin now began to see her frequently. She had established herself in rooms in Gumming Street, Pentonville, where she was very near him. They met often at the houses of Miss Hayes, Mr. Johnson, and other mutual friends. Her interests and tastes were the same as his; and this fact he recognized more fully as time went on. It is probably because his thoughts were so much with her, that the work he accomplished during this year was comparatively small. None of the other women he knew and admired had made him act spontaneously and forget to reason out his conduct as she did. He really had at one time thought of making Amelia Alderson his wife, but this, for some unrecorded reason, proving an impossibility, he calmly dismissed the suggestion from his mind and continued the friend he had been before. Had Mrs. Reveley been single he might have allowed himself to love her, as he did later, when he was a widower and she a widow. But so long as her husband was alive, and he knew he had no right to do so, he, with perfect equanimity, regulated his affection to suit the circ.u.mstances. But he never reasoned either for or against his love for Mary Wollstonecraft. It sprang from his heart, and it had grown into a strong pa.s.sion before he had paused to deliberate as to its advisability.

As for Mary, G.o.dwin's friends.h.i.+p coming just when it did was an inestimable service. Never in all her life had she needed sympathy as she did then. She was virtually alone. Her friends were kind, but their kindness could not quite take the place of the individual love she craved. Imlay had given it to her for a while, and her short-lived happiness with him made her present loneliness seem more unendurable. Her separation from him really dated back to the time when she left Havre.

Her affection for him had been destroyed sooner than she thought because she had struggled bravely to retain it for the sake of her child. The gayety and many distractions of London life could not drown her heart's wretchedness. It was through G.o.dwin that she became reconciled to England, to life, and to herself. He revived her enthusiasm and renewed her interest in the world and mankind; but above all he gave her that special devotion without which she but half lived. In the restlessness that followed her loss of Imlay's love, she had resolved to make the tour of Italy or Switzerland. Therefore when she had returned to London, expecting it to be but a temporary resting-place, she had taken furnished lodgings. "Now, however," as G.o.dwin says in his Memoirs, "she felt herself reconciled to a longer abode in England, probably without exactly knowing why this change had taken place in her mind." She moved to other rooms in the extremity of Somer's Town, and filled them with the furniture she had used in Store Street in the first days of her prosperity, and which had since been packed away. The unpacking of this furniture was with her what the removal of widows' weeds is with other women. Her first love had perished; but from it rose another stronger and better, just as the ripening of autumn's fruits follows the withering of spring's blossoms. She mastered the harvest-secret, learning the value of that death which yields higher fruition.

In July, G.o.dwin left London and spent the month in Norfolk. Absence from Mary made him realize more than he had hitherto done that she had become indispensable to his happiness. She was constantly in his thoughts. The more he meditated upon her, the more he appreciated her. There was less pleasure in his excursion than in the meeting with her which followed it.

They were both glad to be together again; nor did they hesitate to make their gladness evident. At the end of three weeks they had confessed to each other that they could no longer live apart. Henceforward their lines must be cast in the same places. G.o.dwin's story of their courts.h.i.+p is eloquent in its simplicity. It is almost impossible to believe that it was written by the author of "Political Justice."

"The partiality we conceived for each other," he explains, "was in that mode which I have always regarded as the purest and most refined style of love. It grew with equal advances in the mind of each. It would have been impossible for the most minute observer to have said who was before, and who was after. One s.e.x did not take the priority which long-established custom has awarded it, nor the other overstep that delicacy which is so severely imposed. I am not conscious that either party can a.s.sume to have been the agent or the patient, the toil-spreader or the prey, in the affair. When, in the course of things, the disclosure came, there was nothing, in a manner, for either party to disclose to the other.... It was friends.h.i.+p melting into love."

CHAPTER XIII.

LIFE WITH G.o.dWIN: MARRIAGE.

1796-1797.

G.o.dwin and Mary did not at once marry. The former, in his "Political Justice," had frankly confessed to the world that he thought the existing inst.i.tution of marriage an evil. Mary had by her conduct avowed her agreement with him. But their views in this connection having already been fully stated need not be repeated. In omitting to seek legal sanction to their union both were acting in perfect accord with their standard of morality. Judged according to their motives, neither can be accused of wrong-doing. Pure in their own eyes, they deserve to be so in the world's esteem. Their mistake consisted in their disregard of the fact that, to preserve social order in the community, sacrifices are required from the individual. They forgot--as G.o.dwin, who was opposed to sudden change, should not have forgotten--that laws made for men in general cannot be arbitrarily altered to suit each man in particular.

G.o.dwin, strange to say, was ruled in this matter not only by principle, but by sentiment. For the first time his emotions were stirred, and he really loved. He was more awed by his pa.s.sion than a more susceptible man would have been. It seemed to him too sacred to flaunt before the public. "Nothing can be so ridiculous upon the face of it," he says in the story of their love, "or so contrary to the genuine march of sentiment, as to require the overflowing of the soul to wait upon a ceremony, and that which, wherever delicacy and imagination exist, is of all things most sacredly private, to blow a trumpet before it, and to record the moment when it has arrived at its climax." Mary was anxious to conceal, at least for a time, their new relations.h.i.+p. She was not ashamed of it, for never, even when her actions seem most daring, did she swerve from her ideas of right and wrong. But though, as a rule, people had blinded themselves to the truth, some bitter things had been said about her life with Imlay, and some friends had found it their duty to be unkind. All that was unpleasant she had of course heard. One is always sure to hear the evil spoken of one. A second offence against social decrees would a.s.suredly call forth redoubled discussion and increased vituperation. The misery caused by her late experience was still vivid in her memory. She was no less sensitive than she had been then, and she shrank from a second scandal. She dreaded the world's harshness, much as a Tennyson might that of critics whom he knows to be immeasurably his inferiors.

The great change in their relations made little difference in their way of living. Their determination to keep it secret would have been sufficient to prevent any domestic innovations in the establishment of either. But, in addition to this, G.o.dwin had certain theories upon the subject. Because his love was the outcome of strong feeling and not of calm discussion, his reliance upon reason, as the regulator of his actions, did not cease. The habits of a life-time could not be so easily broken. If he had not governed love in its growth, he at least ruled its expression. It was necessary to decide upon a course of conduct for the two lives now made one. At this juncture he was again the placid philosopher. It had occurred to him, probably in the days when Hannah G.o.dwin was wife-hunting for him, or later, when Amelia Alderson met with his good-will, that if husband and wife live on too intimate and familiar terms, the chances are they will tire of each other very soon. When the charm of novelty and uncertainty is removed, there is danger of satiety.

Whereas, if domestic pleasures can be combined with a little of the formality which exists previous to marriage, all the advantages of the married state are secured, while the monotony that too often kills pa.s.sion is avoided. Since he and Mary were to be really, if not legally, man and wife, the time had come to test the truth of these ideas. The plan he proposed was that they should be as independent of each other as they had hitherto been, that the time spent together should not in any way be restricted or regulated by stated hours, and that, in their amus.e.m.e.nts and social intercourse, each should continue wholly free.

Mary readily acquiesced, though such a suggestion would probably never have originated with her. Her heart was too large and warm for doubts, where love was concerned. She was the very opposite of G.o.dwin in this respect. She had the poetic rather than the philosophic temperament, and when she loved it was with an intensity that made a.n.a.lysis of her feelings and their possible results out of the question. It is true that in her "Rights of Women" she had shown that pa.s.sion must inevitably lose its first ardor, and that love between man and wife must in the course of time become either friends.h.i.+p or indifference. But while she had reasoned dispa.s.sionately in an abstract treatise, she had not been equally temperate in the direction of her own affairs. Her love for Imlay had not pa.s.sed into the second stage, but his had deteriorated into indifference very quickly. G.o.dwin was, as she well knew, in every way unlike Imlay.

That she felt perfect confidence in him is seen by her willingness to live with him. But still, sure as she was of his innate uprightness, when he suggested to her means by which to insure the continuance of his love, she was only too glad to adopt them. She had learned, if not to be prudent herself, at least to comply with the prudence of others.

It would not be well perhaps for every one to follow their plan of life, but with them it succeeded admirably. G.o.dwin remained in his lodgings, Mary in hers. He continued his old routine of work, made his usual round of visits, and went by himself, as of yore, to the theatre, and to the dinners and suppers of his friends. Mary pursued uninterruptedly her studies and writings, conducted her domestic concerns in the same way, and sought her amus.e.m.e.nts singly, sometimes meeting G.o.dwin quite unexpectedly at the play or in private houses. His visits to her were as irregular in point of time as they had previously been, and when one wanted to make sure of the other for a certain hour or at a certain place, a regular engagement had to be made. The thoroughness with which they maintained their independence is ill.u.s.trated by the following note which Mary sent to G.o.dwin one morning, about a month before their marriage:--

"Did I not see you, friend G.o.dwin, at the theatre last night? I thought I met a smile, but you went out without looking around."

She was not mistaken. G.o.dwin has recorded in his diary that he was at the theatre on that particular occasion. They not only did not inform each other of their movements, but they even considered it unnecessary to speak when they met by chance. G.o.dwin's realization of his theory further confirmed him in the belief that in this particular he was right. When he wrote "St. Leon," he is supposed to have intended Marguerite, the heroine, for the picture of his wife. In that novel, in his account of the hero's domestic affairs, he indirectly testifies to the merits of his own home-life. St. Leon says:--

"We had each our separate pursuits, whether for the cultivation of our minds or the promotion of our mutual interests. Separation gave us respectability in each other's eyes, while it prepared us to enter with fresh ardor into society and conversation."

The peculiar terms on which they lived had at least one advantage. They were the means of giving to later generations a clear insight into their domestic relations. For, as the two occupied separate lodgings and were apart during the greater part of the day, they often wrote to each other concerning matters which people so united usually settle by word of mouth. G.o.dwin's diary was a record of bare facts. Mary never kept one.

There was no one else to describe their every-day life. This is exactly what is accomplished by the notes which thus, while they are without absolute merit, are of relative importance. They are really little informal conversations on paper. To read them is like listening to some one talking. They show how ready Mary was to enlist G.o.dwin's sympathy on all occasions, small as well as great, and how equally ready he was to be interested. It is always a surprise to find that the children of light are, despite their high mission, made of the same stuff as other men. It is therefore strange to hear these two apostles of reform talking much in the same strain as ordinary mortals, making engagements to dine on beef, groaning over petty ailments and miseries, and greeting each other in true _bon compagnon_ style. Mary's notes, like her letters to Imlay, are essentially feminine. Short as they are, they are full of womanly tenderness and weakness. Sometimes she wrote to invite G.o.dwin to dinner or to notify him that she intended calling at his apartments, at the same time sending a bulletin of her health and of her plans for the day. At others she seems to have written simply because she could not wait, even a few hours, to make a desired explanation, to express an irrepressible complaint, or to acquaint him with some domestic _contretemps_. The following are fair specimens of this correspondence:--

Jan. 5, 1797.

_Thursday morning._--I was very glad that you were not with me last night, for I could not rouse myself. To say the truth, I was unwell and out of spirits; I am better to-day.

I shall take a walk before dinner, and expect to see you this evening, _chez moi_, about eight, if you have no objection.

Jan. 12, 1797.

_Thursday morning._--I am better this morning, but it snows so incessantly that I do not know how I shall be able to keep my appointment this evening. What say you? But you have no petticoats to dangle in the snow. Poor women,--how they are beset with plagues within and without!

Jan. 13, 1797.

_Friday morning._--I believe I ought to beg your pardon for talking at you last night, though it was in sheer simplicity of heart, and I have been asking myself why it so happened. Faith and troth, it was because there was n.o.body else worth attacking, or who could converse. C. had wearied me before you entered. But be a.s.sured, when I find a man that has anything in him, I shall let my every-day dish alone.

I send you the "Emma" for Mrs. Inchbald, supposing you have not altered your mind.

Bring Holcroft's remarks with you, and Ben Jonson.

Jan. 27, 1797.

I am not well this morning. It is very tormenting to be thus, neither sick nor well, especially as you scarcely imagine me indisposed.

Women are certainly great fools; but nature made them so. I have not time or paper, else I could draw an inference, not very ill.u.s.trative of your chance-medley system. But I spare the moth-like opinion; there is room enough in the world, etc.