O my dear parents, how can you, as in your postscript, say, “May we not be favoured now-and-then with a letter?” Call me your daughter, your Pamela—­I am no lady to you.  I have more pleasure to be called your comfort, and thought to act worthy of the sentiments with which your example and instructions have inspired me, than in any other thing in this life; my determined duty to our common benefactor, the best of gentlemen and husbands, excepted.  God has blessed me for your sakes, and has thus answered for me all your prayers; nay, more than answered all you or I could have wished or hoped for.  We only prayed, only hoped, that God would preserve you honest, and me virtuous:  and, O see, my excellent parents, how we are crowned with blessings upon blessings, till we are the talk of all that know us.

Hence, my dear parents (I mean, from the delight I have in writing to you, which transports me far above my own sphere), you’ll see, that I must write, and cannot help it, if I would.  And will it be a great joy to you?—­And is there any thing that can add to your joy, think you, in the power of your Pamela, that she would not do?  O that the lives and healths of my dearest Mr. B. and you, my parents, may be continued to me!  And who can then be so blest as your Pamela?

I will write, depend upon it, on every occasion—­and you augment my joys to think it is in my power to add to your comforts.  Nor can you conceive my pleasure in hoping that this your new happy lot may, by relieving you from corroding care, and the too wearying effects of hard labour, add, in these your advanced years, to both your days.  For, so happy am I, I can have no grief, no pain, in looking forward, but from reflecting, that one day we must be separated.

But it is fit that we so comport ourselves as not to embitter our present happiness with prospects too gloomy—­but bring our minds to be cheerfully thankful for the present, wisely to enjoy that present as we go along—­and at last, when all is to be wound up—­lie down, and say, “Not mine, but Thy will be done.”

I have written much; yet have still more to say relating to other parts of your kind acceptable letter; and so will soon write again:  for I must think every opportunity happy, whereby I can assure you, how much I am, and will ever be, without any addition to my name, if it will make you easier, your dutiful

PAMELA.

LETTER IV

MY DEAREST FATHER AND MOTHER,

I now write again, as I told you I should in my last; but I am half afraid to look at the copy of it; for your worthy hearts, so visible in your letter and my beloved’s kind deportment upon shewing it to him, raised me into a frame of mind, bordering on ecstasy:  yet I wrote my heart.  But you must not, my dear father, write to your Pamela so affectingly.  Your steadier mind could hardly bear your own moving strain, and you were forced to lay down your pen, and retire:  how then could I, who love you so dearly, if you had not increased that love by fresh and stronger instances of your worthiness, forbear being affected, and raised above myself!  But I will not again touch upon this subject.