Barville, who used her house, just come to town,
whom she was not a little perplex'd about providing a suit-
able companion for; which was indeed a point of difficulty,
as he was under the tyranny of a cruel taste: that of an
ardent desire, not only of being unmercifully whipp'd him-
self, but of whipping others, in such sort, that tho' he paid
extravagantly 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 in-
creased 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 experi-
ment, 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 sur-
prising 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 tempta-
tion of an immense interest indeed that could have induced me
to embrace such a job; neither had I ever express'd, nor in-
deed 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.
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