of my income, be it what it would.  I aim at no glare in what I do of that sort.  All I wish for, is the power of relieving the lame, the blind, the sick, and the industrious poor, and those whom accident has made so, or sudden distress reduced.  The common or bred beggars I leave to others, and to the public provision.  They cannot be lower:  perhaps they wish not to be higher:  and, not able to do for every one, I aim not at works of supererogation.  Two hundred pounds a year would do all I wish to do of the separate sort:  for all above, I would content myself to ask you; except, mistrusting your own economy, you would give up to my management and keeping, in order to provide for future contingencies, a larger portion; for which, as your steward, I would regularly account.

’As to clothes, I have particularly two suits, which, having been only in a manner tried on, would answer for any present occasion.  Jewels I have of my grandmother’s, which want only new-setting:  another set I have, which on particular days I used to wear.  Although these are not sent me, I have no doubt, being merely personals, but they will, when I should send for them in another name:  till when I should not choose to wear any.

’As to your complaints of my diffidences, and the like, I appeal to your own heart, if it be possible for you to make my case your own for one moment, and to retrospect some parts of your behaviour, words, and actions, whether I am not rather to be justified than censured:  and whether, of all the men in the world, avowing what you avow, you ought not to think so.  If you do not, let me admonish you, Sir, from the very great mismatch that then must appear to be in our minds, never to seek, nor so much as to wish, to bring about the most intimate union of interests between yourself and

Clarissa Harlowe. 
May 20.’

***

The original of this charming paper, as Dorcas tells me, was torn almost in two.  In one of her pets, I suppose!  What business have the sex, whose principal glory is meekness, and patience, and resignation, to be in a passion, I trow?—­Will not she who allows herself such liberties as a maiden take greater when married?

And a wife to be in a passion!—­Let me tell the ladies, it is an impudent thing, begging their pardon, and as imprudent as impudent, for a wife to be in a passion, if she mean not eternal separation, or wicked defiance, by it:  For is it not rejecting at once all that expostulatory meekness, and gentle reasoning, mingled with sighs as gentle, and graced with bent knees, supplicating hands, and eyes lifted up to your imperial countenance, just running over, that you should make a reconciliation speedy, and as lasting as speedy?  Even suppose the husband is in the wrong, will not this being so give the greater force to her expostulation?