though I have been here but three or four days; that all their mirth has not mended my humour, and that I am here the same I was in other places; that I hope, merely because you bid me, and lose that hope as often as I consider anything but yours.  Would I were easy of belief! they say one is so to all that one desires.  I do not find it, though I am told I was so extremely when I believed you loved me.  That I would not find, and you have only power to make me think it.  But I am called upon.  How fain I would say more; yet ’tis all but the saying with more circumstance than I am

Yours.

[Directed.] For your master.

Letter 64.

I see you can chide when you please, and with authority; but I deserve it, I confess, and all I can say for myself is, that my fault proceeded from a very good principle in me.  I am apt to speak what I think; and to you have so accustomed myself to discover all my heart that I do not believe it will ever be in my power to conceal a thought from you.  Therefore I am afraid you must resolve to be vexed with all my senseless apprehensions as my brother Peyton is with some of his wife’s, who is thought a very good woman, but the most troublesome one in a coach that ever was.  We dare not let our tongues lie more on one side of our mouths than t’other for fear of overturning it.  You are satisfied, I hope, ere this that I ’scaped drowning.  However, ’tis not amiss that my will made you know now how to dispose of all my wealth whensoever I die.  But I am troubled much you should make so ill a journey to so little purpose; indeed, I writ by the first post after my arrival here, and cannot imagine how you came to miss of my letters.  Is your father returned yet, and do you think of coming over immediately?  How welcome you will be.  But, alas!  I cannot talk on’t at the rate that you do.  I am sensible that such an absence is misfortune enough, but I dare not promise myself that it will conclude ours; and ’tis more my belief that you yourself speak it rather to encourage me, and to your wishes than your hopes.

My humour is so ill at present, that I dare say no more lest you chide me again.  I find myself fit for nothing but to converse with a lady below, that is fallen out with all the world because her husband and she cannot agree.  ’Tis the pleasantest thing that can be to hear us discourse.  She takes great pains to dissuade me from ever marrying, and says I am the veriest fool that ever lived if I do not take her counsel.  Now we do not absolutely agree in that point, but I promise her never to marry unless I can find such a husband as I describe to her, and she believes is never to be found; so that, upon the matter, we differ very little.  Whensoever she is accused of maintaining opinions very destructive of society, and absolutely prejudicial to all the young people of both sexes that live in the house, she calls out me to be her second, and by it has lost me the