I have not yet
made it any part of my employment to collect sentences against marriage;
nor am inclined to lessen the number of the few friends whom time has
left me, by obstructing that happiness which I cannot partake, and
venting my vexation in censures of the forwardness and indiscretion of
girls, or the inconstancy, tastelessness, and perfidy of men.
It is, indeed, not very difficult to bear that condition to which we are
not condemned by necessity, but induced by observation and choice; and
therefore I, perhaps, have never yet felt all the malignity with which a
reproach, edged with the appellation of old maid, swells some of those
hearts in which it is infixed. I was not condemned in my youth to
solitude, either by indigence or deformity, nor passed the earlier part
of life without the flattery of courtship, and the joys of triumph. I
have danced the round of gaiety amidst the murmurs of envy, and
gratulations of applause; been attended from pleasure to pleasure by the
great, the sprightly, and the vain; and seen my regard solicited by the
obsequiousness of gallantry, the gaiety of wit, and the timidity of
love. If, therefore, I am yet a stranger to nuptial happiness, I suffer
only the consequences of my own resolves, and can look back upon the
succession of lovers, whose addresses I have rejected, without grief,
and without malice.
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