“This night was spent in a state of stupefaction, or desperation.  I detested mankind, and abhorred myself.

“In the morning I ventured out, to throw myself in my master’s way, at his usual hour of going abroad.  I approached him, he ’damned me for a b——­, declared I had disturbed the peace of the family, and that he had sworn to his wife, never to take any more notice of me.’  He left me; but, instantly returning, he told me that he should speak to his friend, a parish-officer, to get a nurse for the brat I laid to him; and advised me, if I wished to keep out of the house of correction, not to make free with his name.

“I hurried back to my hole, and, rage giving place to despair, sought for the potion that was to procure abortion, and swallowed it, with a wish that it might destroy me, at the same time that it stopped the sensations of new-born life, which I felt with indescribable emotion.  My head turned round, my heart grew sick, and in the horrors of approaching dissolution, mental anguish was swallowed up.  The effect of the medicine was violent, and I was confined to my bed several days; but, youth and a strong constitution prevailing, I once more crawled out, to ask myself the cruel question, ‘Whither I should go?’ I had but two shillings left in my pocket, the rest had been expended, by a poor woman who slept in the same room, to pay for my lodging, and purchase the necessaries of which she partook.

“With this wretch I went into the neighbouring streets to beg, and my disconsolate appearance drew a few pence from the idle, enabling me still to command a bed; till, recovering from my illness, and taught to put on my rags to the best advantage, I was accosted from different motives, and yielded to the desire of the brutes I met, with the same detestation that I had felt for my still more brutal master.  I have since read in novels of the blandishments of seduction, but I had not even the pleasure of being enticed into vice.

“I shall not,” interrupted Jemima, “lead your imagination into all the scenes of wretchedness and depravity, which I was condemned to view; or mark the different stages of my debasing misery.  Fate dragged me through the very kennels of society:  I was still a slave, a bastard, a common property.  Become familiar with vice, for I wish to conceal nothing from you, I picked the pockets of the drunkards who abused me; and proved by my conduct, that I deserved the epithets, with which they loaded me at moments when distrust ought to cease.

“Detesting my nightly occupation, though valuing, if I may so use the word, my independence, which only consisted in choosing the street in which I should wander, or the roof, when I had money, in which I should hide my head, I was some time before I could prevail on myself to accept of a place in a house of ill fame, to which a girl, with whom I had accidentally conversed in the street, had recommended me.  I had been hunted almost into a fever, by the watchmen of the