To complete my mortification, it was his practice to impose tasks upon
me, by requiring me to write upon such subjects as he thought
susceptible of ornament and illustration. With these extorted
performances he was little satisfied, because he rarely found in them
the ideas which his own imagination had suggested, and which he
therefore thought more natural than mine.
When the pale of ceremony is broken, rudeness and insult soon enter the
breach. He now found that he might safely harass me with vexation, that
he had fixed the shackles of patronage upon me, and that I could neither
resist him nor escape. At last, in the eighth year of my servitude, when
the clamour of creditors was vehement, and my necessity known to be
extreme, he offered me a small office, but hinted his expectation, that
I should marry a young woman with whom he had been acquainted.
I was not so far depressed by my calamities as to comply with this
proposal; but, knowing that complaints and expostulations would but
gratify his insolence, I turned away with that contempt with which I
shall never want spirit to treat the wretch who can outgo the guilt of a
robber without the temptation of his profit, and who lures the credulous
and thoughtless to maintain the show of his levee, and the mirth of his
table, at the expense of honour, happiness, and life.
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