I have this day received a letter subscribed "Fidelia," that gives me an
account of an enchantment under which a young lady suffers, and desires
my help to exorcise her from the power of the sorcerer. Her lover is a
rake of sixty; the lady a virtuous woman of twenty-five: her relations
are to the last degree afflicted, and amazed at this irregular passion:
their sorrow I know not how to remove, but can their astonishment; for
there is no spirit in woman half so prevalent as that of contradiction,
which is the sole cause of her perseverance. Let the whole family go
dressed in a body, and call the bride to-morrow morning to her nuptials,
and I'll undertake, the inconstant will forget her lover in the midst of
all his aches. But if this expedient does not succeed, I must be so just
to the young lady's distinguishing sense, as to applaud her choice. A
fine young woman, at last, is but what is due from fate to an honest
fellow, who has suffered so unmercifully by the sex; and I think we
cannot enough celebrate her heroic virtue, who (like the patriot that
ended a pestilence by plunging himself into a gulf) gives herself up to
gorge that dragon which has devoured so many virgins before her.
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