Mr. Hickman was proposed to me.  I refused him again and again.  He persisted; my mother his advocate.  I told him my dislike of all men—­of him—­of matrimony—­still he persisted.  I used him with tyranny—­led, indeed, partly by my temper, partly by design; hoping thereby to get rid of him; till the poor man (his character unexceptionably uniform) still persisting, made himself a merit with me by his patience.  This brought down my pride, [I never, Sir, was accounted very ungenerous, nor quite ungrateful,] and gave me, at one time, an inferiority in my own opinion to him; which lasted just long enough for my friends to prevail upon me to promise him encouragement, and to receive his addresses.

Having done so, when the weather-glass of my pride got up again, I found I had gone too far to recede.  My mother and my friends both held me to it.  Yet I tried him, I vexed him, an hundred ways; and not so much neither with design to vex him, as to make him hate me, and decline his suit.

He bore this, however; and got nothing but my pity; yet still my mother, and my friend, having obtained my promise, [made, however, not to him, but to them,] and being well assured that I valued no man more than Mr. Hickman, (who never once disobliged me in word, or deed, or look, except by his foolish perseverance,) insisted upon the performance.

While my dear friend was in her unhappy uncertainty, I could not think of marriage; and now, what encouragement have I?—­She, my monitress, my guide, my counsel, gone, for ever gone! by whose advice and instructions I hoped to acquit myself tolerably in the state to which I could not avoid entering.  For, Sir, my mother is so partially Mr. Hickman’s friend, that I am sure, should any difference arise, she would always censure me, and acquit him; even were he ungenerous enough to remember me in his day.

This, Sir, being my situation, consider how difficult it is for me to think of marriage.  Whenever we approve, we can find an hundred good reasons to justify our approbation.  Whenever we dislike, we can find a thousand to justify our dislike.  Every thing in the latter case is an impediment; every shadow a bugbear.—­Thus can I enumerate and swell, perhaps, only imaginary grievances; ’I must go whither he would have me to go; visit whom he would have me to visit:  well as I love to write, (though now, alas! my grand inducement to write is over!) it must be to whom he pleases:’  and Mrs. Hickman (who, as Miss Howe, cannot do wrong) would hardly ever be able to do right.  Thus, the tables turned upon me, I am reminded of my vowed obedience; Madam’d up perhaps to matrimonial perfection, and all the wedded warfare practised comfortably over between us, (for I shall not be passive under insolent treatment,) till we become curses to each other, a bye-word to our neighbours, and the jest of our own servants.