The person who, according to the regulation agreed upon, was to have the precedency in talking of herself; a valuable privilege! was about three-and-twenty; tall and genteel; her complexion was brown, but her features good, and her countenance animated with a pair of the finest black eyes imaginable, which shone with a vivacity that distress could not extinguish. She began as follows.

My father was a very rich trader in a country town; and known to be so substantial, that it rendered him one of the principal people in it; an advantage of which I partook: For a tradesman's daughter is as much raised above others who are included in the same class, by a little superiority in wealth, as a lady of quality is by the priority of her ancestors admission among the nobility. I had two brothers; and a sister a few years older than myself, who had but one eye, and was besides lame of a leg. She had sense enough to see she was not made to be admired in public, and therefore placed her ambition in shining in domestic life. Like most girls, she had been taught to think marriage the ultimate end of her creation; and that woman was made for man, in a more humble sense still than our first mother, who had the person for whom she was designed, ready to receive her as soon as created. My sister looked on this as the peculiar privilege of the first of the species; and that all her female descendants were to wait till that superior sex should please to accept them; which might never happen at all.