Now, Sir, as I needs must plead guilty to this indictment, do you think I ought not to resolve upon a single life?—­I, who have such an opinion of your sex, that I think there is not one man in an hundred whom a woman of sense and spirit can either honour or obey, though you make us promise both, in that solemn form of words which unites or rather binds us to you in marriage?

When I look round upon all the married people of my acquaintance, and see how they live, and what they bear who live best, I am confirmed in my dislike to the state.

Well do your sex contrive to bring us up fools and idiots, in order to make us bear the yoke you lay upon our shoulders; and that we may not despise you from our hearts, (as we certainly should, if we were brought up as you are,) for your ignorance, as much as you often make us do (as it is) for your insolence.

These, Sir, are some of my notions.  And, with these notions, let me repeat my question, Do you think I ought to marry at all?

If I marry either a sordid or an imperious wretch, can I, do you think, live with him?  And ought a man of a contrary character, for the sake of either of our reputations, to be plagued with me?

Long did I stand out against all the offers made me, and against all the persuasions of my mother; and, to tell you the truth, the longer, and with the more obstinacy, as the person my choice would have first fallen upon was neither approved by my mother, nor by my dear friend.  This riveted me to my pride, and to my opposition; for although I was convinced, after a while, that my choice would neither have been prudent nor happy; and that the specious wretch was not what he had made me believe he was; yet could I not easily think of any other man; and indeed, from the detection of him, took a settled aversion to the whole sex.

At last Mr. Hickman offered himself; a man worthy of a better choice.  He had the good fortune [he thinks it so] to be agreeable (and to make his proposals agreeable) to my mother.

As to myself; I own, that were I to have chosen a brother, Mr. Hickman should have been the man; virtuous, sober, sincere, friendly, as he is.  But I wish not to marry; nor knew I the man in the world whom I could think deserving of my beloved friend.  But neither of our parents would let us live single.

The accursed Lovelace was proposed warmly to her at one time; and, while she was yet but indifferent to him, they, by ungenerous usage of him, (for then, Sir, he was not known to be Beelzebub himself,) and by endeavouring to force her inclinations in favour first of one worthless man, then of another, in antipathy to him, through her foolish brother’s caprice, turned that indifference (from the natural generosity of her soul) into a regard which she never otherwise would have had for a man of his character.