Letter VIII

To Jane Talbot

Wilmington, Saturday, October 9.

I thought I had convinced my friend that a letter from me ought not to be expected earlier than Monday. I left her to gratify no fickle humour, nor because my chief pleasure lay anywhere but in her company. She knew of my design to make some stay at this place, and that the business that occasioned my stay would leave me no leisure to write.

Is it possible that my visits to Miss Secker have given you any concern? Why must the source of your anxiety be always so mortifying and opprobrious to me? That the absence of a few days, and the company of another woman, should be thought to change my sentiments, and make me secretly recant those vows which I offered to you, is an imputation on my common sense which--I suppose I deserve. You judge of me from what you know of me. How can you do otherwise? If my past conduct naturally creates such suspicions, who am I to blame but myself? Reformation should precede respect; and how should I gain confidence in my integrity but as the fruit of perseverance in well-doing?

Alas! how much has he lost who has forfeited his own esteem!

As to Miss Secker, your ignorance of her, and, I may add, of yourself, has given her the preference. You think her your superior, no doubt, in every estimable and attractive quality, and therefore suspect her influence on a being so sensual and volatile as poor Hal. Were she really more lovely, the faithless and giddy wretch might possibly forget you; but Miss Secker is a woman whose mind and person are not only inferior to yours, but wholly unfitted to inspire love. If it were possible to smile in my present mood, I think I should indulge one smile at the thought of falling in love with a woman who has scarcely had education enough to enable her to write her name, who has been confined to her bed about eighteen months by a rheumatism contracted by too assiduous application to the wash-tub, and who often boasts that she was born, not above forty-five years ago, in an upper story of the mansion at Mount Vernon.