Imagine to yourself a man rather past threescore, short
and ill-made, with a yellow cadaverous hue, great goggling
eyes that stared as if he was strangled; and out-mouth from
two more properly tusks than teeth, livid-lips, and breath
like a jake's: then he had a peculiar ghastliness in his grin
that made him perfectly frightful, if not dangerous to women
with child; yet, made as he was thus in mock of man, he was
so blind to his own staring deformities as to think himself
born for pleasing, and that no woman could see him with im-
punity: in consequence of which idea, he had lavish'd great
sums on such wretches as could gain upon themselves to pre-
tend love to his person, whilst to those who had not art or
patience to dissemble the horror it inspir'd, he behaved
even brutally. Impotence, more than necessity, made him
seek in variety the provocative that was wanting to raise
him to the pitch of enjoyment, which too he often saw him-
self baulked of, by the failure of his powers: and this
always threw him into a fit of rage, which he wreak'd, as
far as he durst, on the innocent objects of his fit of
momentary desire.
This then was the monster to which my conscientious
benefactress, who had long been his purveyor in this way,
had doom'd me, and sent for me down purposely for his ex-
amination. Accordingly she made me stand up before him,
turn'd me round, unpinn'd my handkerchief, remark'd to him
the rise and fall, the turn and whiteness of a bosom just
beginning to fill; then made me walk, and took even a han-
dle from the rusticity of my gait, to inflame the inventory
of my charms: in short, she omitted no point of jockeyship;
to which he only answer'd by gracious nods of approbation,
whilst he look'd goats and monkies at me: for I sometimes
stole a corner glance at him, and encountering his fiery,
eager stare, looked another way from pure horror and af-
fright, which he, doubtless in character, attributed to
nothing more than maiden modesty, or at least the affec-
tation of it.
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