Resuming now where I broke off in my last, I am in my
way to remark to you that it was late in the evening before
I arriv'd at my new lodgings, and Mrs. Cole, after helping
me to range and secure my things, spent the whole evening
with me in my apartment, where we supped together, in giving
me the best advice and instruction with regard to this new
stage of my profession I was now to enter upon; and passing
thus from a private devotee to pleasure into a public one,
to become a more general good, with all the advantages re-
quisite to put my person out to use, either for interest or
pleasure, or both. But then, she observ'd, as I was a kind
of new face upon the town, that it was an established rule,
and part of trade, for me to pass for a maid, and dispose of
myself as such on the first good occasion, without prejudice,
however, to such diversions as I might have a mind to in the
interim; for that nobody could be a greater enemy than she
was to the losing of time. That she would, in the mean time,
do her best to find out a proper person, and would undertake
to manage this nice point for me, if I would accept of her
aid and advice to such good purpose that, in the loss of a
fictitious maidenhead, I should reap all the advantages of a
native one.
Though such a delicacy of sentiments did not extremely
belong to my character at that time, I confess, against my-
self, that I perhaps too readily closed with a proposal which
my candor and ingenuity gave me some repugnance to: but not
enough to contradict the intention of one to whom I had now
thoroughly abandoned the direction of all my steps.
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