 those who had the
courage and complaisance to submit to his humour, there were few, delicate as he
was in the choice of his subjects, who would exchange turns with him so terrible
at the expense of their skin. But, what yet increased the oddity of this strange
fancy was the gentleman being young; whereas it generally attacks, it seems,
such as are, through age, obliged to have recourse to this experiment, for
quickening the circulation of their sluggish juices, and determining a conflux
of the spirits of pleasure towards those flagging, shrivelly parts, that rise to
life only by virtue of those titillating ardours created by the discipline of
their opposites, with which they have so surprising a consent.
    This Mrs. Cole could not well acquaint me with, in any expectation of my
offering my service: for, sufficiently easy as I was in my circumstances, it
must have been the temptation of an immense interest indeed that could have
induced me to embrace such a job; neither had I ever express'd, nor indeed felt,
the least impulse or curiosity to know more of a taste that promis'd so much
more pain than pleasure to those that stood in no need of such violent goads:
what then should move me to subscribe myself voluntarily to a party of pain,
foreknowing it such? Why, to tell the plain truth, it was a sudden caprice, a
gust of fancy for trying a new experiment, mix'd with the vanity of proving my
personal courage to Mrs. Cole, that determined me, at all risks, to propose
myself to her, and relieve her from any farther lookout. Accordingly, I at once
pleas'd and surpris'd her with a frank and unreserved tender of my person to
her, and her friend's absolute disposal on this occasion.
    My good temporal mother was, however, so kind as to use all the arguments
she could imagine to dissuade me: but, as I found they only turn'd on a motive
of tenderness to me, I persisted in my resolution, and thereby acquitted my
offer of any suspicion of its not having been sincerely made, or out of
compliment only. Acquiescing then thankfully in it, Mrs. Cole assur'd me that
bating the pain I should be put to, she had no scruple to engage me to this
party, which she assur'd me I should be liberally paid for, and which, the
secrecy of the transaction preserved safe from the ridicule that otherwise
vulgarly attended it; that for her part, she considered pleasure, of one sort or
other
