 flames of discord in the family of
Yours always,
                                                                   MATT. BRAMBLE
    Tweedmouth, July 15.
 

                     To Sir Watkin Phillips, Bart. at Oxon.

Dear Wat,
    In my two last you had so much of Lismahago, that I suppose you are glad he
is gone off the stage for the present. - I must now descend to domestic
occurrences. - Love, it seems, is resolved to assert his dominion over all the
females of our family. - After having practised upon poor Liddy's heart, and
played strange vagaries with our aunt Mrs. Tabitha, he began to run riot in the
affections of her woman Mrs. Winifred Jenkins, whom I have had occasion to
mention more than once in the course of our memoirs. Nature intended Jenkins for
something very different from the character of her mistress; yet custom and
habit have effected a wonderful resemblance betwixt them in many particulars.
Win, to be sure, is much younger and more agreeable in her person; she is
likewise tender-hearted and benevolent, qualities for which her mistress is by
no means remarkable, no more than she is for being of a timorous disposition,
and much subject to fits of the mother, which are the infirmities of Win's
constitution: but then she seems to have adopted Mrs. Tabby's manner with her
cast cloaths. - She dresses and endeavours to look like her mistress, although
her own looks are much more engaging. - She enters into her scheme of oeconomy,
learns her phrases, repeats her remarks, imitates her stile in scolding the
inferior servants, and, finally, subscribes implicitly to her system of devotion
- This, indeed, she found the more agreeable, as it was in a great measure
introduced and confirmed by the ministry of Clinker, with whose personal merit
she seems to have been struck ever since he exhibited the pattern of his naked
skin at Marlborough.
    Nevertheless, though Humphry had this double hank upon her inclinations, and
exerted all his power to maintain the conquest he had made, he found it
impossible to guard it on the side of vanity, where poor Win was as frail as any
female in the kingdom. In short, my rascal Dutton professed himself her admirer,
and, by dint of his outlandish qualifications, threw his rival Clinker out of
the saddle of her heart. Humphry may be compared to an English pudding, composed
of good wholesome flour and suet, and Dutton to a syllabub or iced froth, which,
though agreeable to the taste, has nothing solid or substantial. The traitor not
only dazzled her with his second-hand finery, but
