let me read over again that fearful letter of yours, that I may get it by heart, and with it feed my distress, and make calamity familiar to me. - Samuel Richardson

You say that if a woman resolves not to marry till she finds herself addressed to by a man of strict virtue, she must be for ever single. If this be true, what wicked creatures are men! What a dreadful abuse of passions, given them for the noblest purposes, are they guilty of!

But a caution, Harriet! — Never, never, let foolish dreams claim a moment of your attention — Imminent as seemed the danger, your superstition made more dreadful to you than otherwise it would have been. You have a mind superior to such foibles: Act up to its native dignity, and let not the follies of your nurses, in your infantile state, be carried into your maturer age, to depreciate your womanly reason. Do you think I don’t dream, as well as you?

They will very probably, by remembring past mistakes, avoid many inconveniencies into which forgetfulness will run you lively ones.