I love you very sincerely, Emily:  but I like friendships for the men best; and think prudery, by forbidding them, robs us of some of the most lively as well as innocent pleasures of the heart.

That desire of pleasing; which one feels much the most strongly for a male friend, is in itself a very agreable emotion.

You will say, I am a coquet even in friendship; and I am not quite sure you are not in the right.

I am extremely in love with my husband; yet chuse other men should regard me with complacency, am as fond of attracting the attention of the dear creatures as ever, and, though I do justice to your wit, understanding, sentiment, and all that, prefer Rivers’s conversation infinitely to yours.

Women cannot say civil things to each other; and if they could, they would be something insipid; whereas a male friend—­

’Tis absolutely another thing, my dear; and the first system of ethics I write, I will have a hundred pages on the subject.

Observe, my dear, I have not the least objection to your having a friendship for Fitzgerald.  I am the best-natured creature in the world, and the fondest of increasing the circle of my husband’s innocent amusements.

A propos to innocent amusements, I think your fair sister-in-law an exquisite politician; calling the pleasures to Temple at home, is the best method in the world to prevent his going abroad in pursuit of them.

I am mortified I cannot be at your masquerade; it is my passion, and I have the prettiest dress in the world by me.  I am half inclined to elope for a day or two.

    Adieu!  Your faithful
      A. Fitzgerald.

LETTER 215.

To Captain Fitzgerald.

Bellfield, Nov. 12.

Please to inform the little Bell, I won’t allow her to spoil my
Emily.

I enter a caveat against male friendships, which are only fit for ladies of the salamandrine order.

I desire to engross all Emily’s kind propensities to myself; and should grudge the least share in her heart, or, if you please in her friendship, to an archangel.

However, not to be too severe, since prudery expects women to have no propensities at all, I allow single ladies, of all ranks, sizes, ages, and complexions, to spread the veil of friendship between their hearts and the world.

’Tis the finest day I ever saw, though the middle of November; a dry soft west wind, the air as mild as in April, and an almost Canadian sunshine.

I have been bathing in the clear stream, at the end of my garden; the same stream in which I laved my careless bosom at thirteen; an idea which gave me inconceivable delight; and the more, as my bosom is as gay and tranquil at this moment as in those dear hours of chearfulness and innocence.

Of all local prejudices, that is the strongest as well as most pleasing, which attaches us to the place of our birth.