May 24

The devil take this uncle of mine! He has at last sent me a letter which I cannot show, without exposing the head of our family for a fool. A confounded parcel of popguns has he let off upon me. I was in hopes he had exhausted his whole stock of this sort in his letter to you.⁠—To keep it back, to delay sending it, till he had recollected all this farrago of nonsense⁠—confound his wisdom of nations, if so much of it is to be scraped together, in disgrace of itself, to make one egregious simpleton!⁠—But I am glad I am fortified with this piece of flagrant folly, however; since, in all human affairs, the convenient and inconvenient, the good and the bad, are so mingled, that there is no having the one without the other.

I have already offered the bill enclosed in it to my beloved; and read to her part of the letter. But she refused the bill: and, as I am in cash myself, I shall return it. She seemed very desirous to peruse the whole letter. And when I told her, that, were it not for exposing the writer, I would oblige her, she said, it would not be exposing his Lordship to show it to her; and that she always preferred the heart to the head. I knew her meaning; but did not thank her for it.

All that makes for me in it I will transcribe for her⁠—yet, hang it, she shall have the letter, and my soul with it, for one consenting kiss.

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She has got the letter from me without the reward. Deuce take me, if I had the courage to propose the condition. A new character this of bashfulness in thy friend. I see, that a truly modest woman may make even a confident man keep his distance. By my soul, Belford, I believe, that nine women in ten, who fall, fall either from their own vanity or levity, or for want of circumspection and proper reserves.

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I did intend to take my reward on her returning a letter so favourable to us both. But she sent it to me, sealed up, by Dorcas. I might have thought that there were two or three hints in it, that she would be too nice immediately to appear to. I send it to thee; and here will stop, to give thee time to read it. Return it as soon as thou hast perused it.