“You may easily imagine how desirous I must be of correspondence with a person who had taught me long ago, that it was as possible to esteem at first sight, as to love; and who has since ruined me for all the conversation of one sex and almost all the friendship of the other.  I am but too sensible, through your means, that the company of men, wants a certain softness to recommend it, and that of women wants everything else.  How often have I been quietly going to take possession of that tranquility and indolence I had so long found in the country, when one evening of your conversation has spoiled me for a solitaire too!  Books have lost their effect upon me, and I was convinced since I saw you, that there is something more powerful than philosophy, and since I heard you, that there is one alive wiser than all the sages.  A plague of female wisdom! it makes a man ten times more uneasy than his own.  What is very strange, Virtue herself, when you have the dressing of her, is too amiable for one’s repose.  What a world of good might you have done in your time, if you had allowed half the fine gentlemen who have seen you to have but conversed with you!  They would have been strangely caught, while they thought only to fall in love with a fair face, and you had bewitched them with reason and virtue, two beauties that the very fops pretend to have an acquaintance with.”

“August 20, 1716.

“Madam,

“You will find me more troublesome than ever Brutus did his evil genius, I shall meet you in more places than one, and often refreshen your memory before you arrive at your Philippi.  These shadows of me (my letters) will be haunting you from time to time, and putting you in mind of the man who has really suffered by you, and whom you have robbed of the most valuable of his enjoyments, your conversation.  The advantage of learning your sentiments by discovering mine, was what I always thought a great one, and even with the risk I run of manifesting my own indiscretion.  You then rewarded my trust in you the moment it was given, for you pleased and informed me the minute you answered.  I must now be contented with slow returns.  However, it is some pleasure, that your thoughts upon paper will be a more lasting possession to me, and that I shall no longer have cause to complain of a loss I have so often regretted, that of anything you said, which I happened to forget.  In earnest, Madam, if I were to write you as often as I think of you, it must be every day of my life.  I attend you in spirit through all your ways, I follow in books of travel through every stage, I wish for you, fear for you through whole folios, you make me shrink at the past dangers of dead travellers, and when I read an agreeable prospect or delightful place, I hope it yet subsists to give you pleasure.  I inquire the roads, the amusements, the company of every town and country you pass through, with as much diligence, as if I were to set out next week to overtake you.