When she had a little recovered her self from the serious Anger she was in, she replied in the following manner.

Sir, when I consider, how perfectly new all you have said on this Subject is, and that the Story you have given us is not quite two thousand Years Old, I cannot but think it a Piece of Presumption to dispute with you:  But your Quotations put me in Mind of the Fable of the Lion and the Man.  The Man walking with that noble Animal, showed him, in the Ostentation of Human Superiority, a Sign of a Man killing a Lion.  Upon which the Lion said very justly, We Lions are none of us Painters, else we could show a hundred Men killed by Lions, for one Lion killed by a Man.  You Men are Writers, and can represent us Women as Unbecoming as you please in your Works, while we are unable to return the Injury.  You have twice or thrice observed in your Discourse, that Hypocrisy is the very Foundation of our Education; and that an Ability to dissemble our affections, is a professed Part of our Breeding.  These, and such other Reflections, are sprinkled up and down the Writings of all Ages, by Authors, who leave behind them Memorials of their Resentment against the Scorn of particular Women, in Invectives against the whole Sex.  Such a Writer, I doubt not, was the celebrated Petronius, who invented the pleasant Aggravations of the Frailty of the Ephesian Lady; but when we consider this Question between the Sexes, which has been either a Point of Dispute or Raillery ever since there were Men and Women, let us take Facts from plain People, and from such as have not either Ambition or Capacity to embellish their Narrations with any Beauties of Imagination.  I was the other Day amusing myself with Ligon’s Account of Barbadoes; and, in Answer to your well-wrought Tale, I will give you (as it dwells upon my Memory) out of that honest Traveller, in his fifty fifth page, the History of Inkle and Yarico. [2]

Mr. Thomas Inkle of London, aged twenty Years, embarked in the Downs, on the good Ship called the ‘Achilles’, bound for the West Indies, on the 16th of June 1647, in order to improve his Fortune by Trade and Merchandize.  Our Adventurer was the third Son of an eminent Citizen, who had taken particular Care to instill into his Mind an early Love of Gain, by making him a perfect Master of Numbers, and consequently giving him a quick View of Loss and Advantage, and preventing the natural Impulses of his Passions, by Prepossession towards his Interests.  With a Mind thus turned, young Inkle had a Person every way agreeable, a ruddy Vigour in his Countenance, Strength in his Limbs, with Ringlets of fair Hair loosely flowing on his Shoulders.  It happened, in the Course of the Voyage, that the Achilles, in some Distress, put into a Creek on the Main of America, in search of Provisions.  The Youth, who is the Hero of my Story, among others,