 to myself, and
compos'd enough to speak, I acquainted those of the house with the whole
transaction I had been evidence to.
    When I came home again, and told Mrs. Cole this adventure, she very sensibly
observ'd to me that there was no doubt of due vengeance one time or other
overtaking these miscreants, however they might escape for the present; and
that, had I been the temporal instrument of it, I should have been at least put
to a great deal more trouble and confusion than I imagined; that, as to the
thing itself, the less said of it was the better; but that though she might be
suspected of partiality, from its being the common cause of woman-kind, out of
whose mouths this practice tended to take something more than bread, yet she
protested against any mixture of passion, with a declaration extorted from her
by pure regard to truth; which was that whatever effect this infamous passion
had in other ages and other countries, it seem'd a peculiar blessing on our air
and climate, that there was a plague-spot visibly imprinted on all that are
tainted with it, in this nation at least; for that among numbers of that stamp
whom she had known, or at least were universally under the scandalous suspicion
of it, she would not name an exception hardly of one of them, whose character
was not, in all other respects, the most worthless and despicable that could be,
stript of all the manly virtues of their own sex, and fill'd up with only the
worst vices and follies of ours: that, in fine, they were scarce less execrable
than ridiculous in their monstrous inconsistence, of loathing and condemning
women, and all at the same time apeing all their manners, airs, lips, skuttle,
and, in general, all their little modes of affectation, which become them at
least better than they do these unsex'd male-misses.
    But here, washing my hands of them, I re-plunge into the stream of my
history, into which I may very properly ingraft a terrible sally of Louisa's,
since I had some share in it myself, and have besides engag'd myself to relate
it, in point of countenance to poor Emily. It will add, too, one more example to
thousands, in confirmation of the maxim that when women get once out of compass,
there are no lengths of licentiousness that they are not capable of running.
    One morning then, that both Mrs. Cole and Emily were gone out for the day,
