deceive such a man; but that necessity which pressed me to a settlement suitable to my con. dition, was my authority for it, and certainly his affection to me, and the goodness of his temper, however they might argue against using him ill, yet they strongly argued to me that he would better take the disappointment than some fiery-was perfectly willing and made it my choice. tempered wretch, who might have nothing to recommend them but those passions which would serve only to make a woman miserable all her days. Besides, though I had jested with him, as he supposed it, so often about my poverty, yet when he found it to be true, he had foreclosed all manner of objection, seeing whether he was in jest or in earnest, he had declared he took me without any regard to my portion; and whether I was in jest or in earnest, I had declared myself to be very poor; so that in word I had him fast both ways, and though he might say afterwards he was cheated, yet he could never say that I had cheated him. He replied generously he did not ask what my fortune was, he had told me from the beginning he would not, and he would be as good as his word; but whatever it was, he assured me he would never desire me to go to Virginia with him, or go thither himself without me, unless I He pursued me close after this, and as I saw there was no need to fear losing him, I played the indifferent part with him longer than prudence might otherwise have dictated to me. But I considered how much this caution and indifference would give me the advantage over him when I should come to be under the necessity of owning my own circumstances to him; and I managed it the more warily, because I found he inferred from thence, as indeed he ought to do, that I either had the more money, or the more judgment, and would not venture at all. I took the freedom one day, after we had talked pretty close to the subject, to tell him that it was true I had received the compliment of a lover from him; namely, that he would take me without inquiring into my fortune, and I would make him a suitable return in this, viz. that I should make as little inquiry into his as consisted with reason, but I hoped he would allow me to ask a few questions, which he should answer or not as he thought fit; and that I would not be offended if he did not answer me at all; one of these questions related to our manner of living, and the place where, because I had heard he had a great plantation in Virginia, and that he had talked of going to live there, and I told him I did not care to be transported. He began from this discourse to let me voluntarily into all his affairs, and to tell me in a frank open way all his circumstances, by which I found he was very well to pass in the world; but that great part of his estate consisted of three plantations which he had in Virginia, which brought him in a very good income, generally speaking, to the tune of 3001. a year; but that, if he was to live upon them, would bring him in four times as much. Very well, thought I, you shall carry me thither as soon as you please, though I won't tell you so beforehand. I jested with him extremely about the figure he would make in Virginia, but I found he would do anything I desired, though he did not seem glad to have me undervalue his plantations; so I turned my tale; I told him I had good reason not to desire to go there to live, because if his plantations were worth so much there, I had not à fortune suitable to a gentleman of 1,2001. a year, as he said his estate would be. All this, you may be sure, was as I wished, and indeed nothing could have happened more perfectly agreeable; I carried it on so far as this with a sort of indifference that he often wondered at more than at first, but which was the only support of his courtship, and I mention it the rather to intimate again to the ladies, that nothing but want of courage for such an indifference makes our sex so cheap, and prepares them to be ill used as they are. Would they venture the loss of a pretending fop now and then, who carries it high upon the point of his own merit, they would certainly be slighted less and courted more. Had I discovered really and truly what my great fortune was, and that in all I had not full 500l. when he expected 1,500l, yet I had hooked him so fast, and played him so long, that I was satisfied he would have had me in my worst circumstances; as indeed it was less a surprise to him, when he learnt the truth, than it would have been, because having not the least blame to lay on me, who had carried it with an air of indifference to the last, he could not say one word, except that indeed he thought it had been more, but that if it had been less he did not repent his bargain, only that he should not be able to maintain me so well as he intended. In short we were married, and very happily married on my side I assure you, as to the man, for he was the best-humoured man that ever a woman had; but his circumstances were not so good as I imagined, as, on the other hand, he had not bettered himself by marrying so much as he expected. When we were married I was shrewdly put to it to bring him that little stock I had, and to let him see it was no more; but there was a necessity for it, so I took my opportunity one day when we were alone, to enter into a short dialogue with him about it. "My dear," said I, "we have been married a fortnight; is it not time. to let you know whether you have got a wife with something or with nothing?" "Your own time for that, my dear," says he. "I am satisfied that I have got the wife I love; I have not troubled you much," says he "with. my inquiries after it." "That is true," said I, "but I have a great difficulty upon me about it, which I scarce know how to manage. "What is that, my dear?" says he. tain "Why," says I, "it is a little hard upon me, and it is harder upon you. I am told that Cap(meaning my friend's husband) has told you I had a great deal more money than I ever pretended to have, and I am sure I never employed him to do so. "Well," says he, "Captain may have told me so, but what then? if you have not so much, that may lie at his door; but you never told me what you had, so I have no reason to blame you if you have nothing at all." "That is so just,' said I, "and so generous, that it makes my having but a little a double affliction to me. "The less you have, my dear," says he, "the worse for us both; but I hope your affliction you speak of, is not caused for fear I should be unkind to you for want of a portion; no, no; if you have nothing, tell me plainly and at once: I may perhaps tell the Captain he has cheated me, but I can never say you have cheated me, for did you not give it under your hand that you were poor, and so I ought to expect you to be ?" "Well," said I, "my dear, I am glad I have not been concerned in deceiving you before marriage; if I deceive you since, it's never the worse. That I am poor is too true, but not so poor as to have nothing, neither;" so I pulled out some bank-bills and gave him about a hundred and sixty pounds. "There is something, my dear," says I, "and not quite all neither." I had brought him so near to expecting nothing by what I said before, that the money, though the sum was small in itself, was doubly welcome to him; he owned it was more than he looked for, and that he did not question by my discourse to him, but that my fine clothes, gold watch, and a diamond ring or two, had been all my fortune. I let him please himself with that 1604. two or three days, and having been abroad that day, and as if I had been to fetch it, I brought him a hundred pounds more home in gold, and told him there was a little more portion for him; and in short, in about a week more I brought him 1804. more, and about 601. in linen, which I made him believe I had been obliged to take with the 100%. which I gave him in gold, as a composition for a debt of 6004., being little more than five shillings in the pound, and overvalued too. "And now my dear," says I to him, "I am very sorry to tell you, that there is all, and that I have given you my whole fortune. I added, that if the person who had my 6001. had not abused me, I had been worth 1,000l. to him, but that as it was, I had been faithful to him, and reserved nothing to myself, but if it had been more he should have had it. He was so obliged by the manner, and so pleased with the sum, for he had been in a terrible fright lest it had been nothing at all, that he accepted it very thankfully. And thus I got over the fraud of passing for a fortune without money, and cheating a man into marrying me on pretence of a fortune; which, by the way, I take to be one of the most dangerous steps a woman can take, and in which she runs the most hazard of being ill-used afterwards. My husband, to give him his due, was a man of infinite good nature, but he was no fool; and finding his income not suited to the manner of living which he had intended, if I had brought him what he expected, and being under a disappointment in his return of his plantation in Virginia, he discovered many times his inclination of going over to Virginia to live upon his own; and often would be magnifying the way of living there, how cheap, how plentiful, how pleasant, and the like. I began presently to understand his meaning, and I took him up very plainly one morning, and told him that I did so; that I found his estate turned to no account at this distance com pared to what it would do if he lived upon the spot, and that I found he had a mind to go and live there; and I added, that I was sensible he had been disappointed in a wife; and that, finding his expectations not answered that way, I could do no less to make him amends than tell him that I was very willing to go over to Virginia with him and live there. He said a thousand kind things to me upon the subject of my making such a proposal to him. He told me, that however he was disappointed in his expectations of a fortune, he was not disappointed in a wife, and that I was all to him that a wife could be, and he was more than satisfied in the whole when the particulars were put together; but that this offer was so kind that it was more than he could express. To bring the story short, we agreed to go. He told me that he had a very good house there, that it was well-furnished, that his mother was alive and lived in it, and one sister, which was all the relations he had; that as soon as he came there his mother would remove to another house which was her own for life, and his after her decease, so that I should have all the house to myself; and I found all this to be exactly as he had said. To make this part of the story short, we put on board the ship which we went in a large quantity of good furniture for our house, with stores of linen and other necessaries, and a good cargo for sale, and away we went. To give an account of the manner of our voyage, which was long and full of dangers, is out of my way. I kept no journal, neither did my husband; all that I can say is, that after a terrible passage, frightened twice with dreadful storms, and once with what was still more terrible, ĺ mean a pirate, who came on board and took away almost all our provisions, and which would have been beyond all to me, they having taken my husband to go along with them, but by entreaties were prevailed with to leave him. I say, after all these terrible things, we arrived in York River, in Virginia, and coming to our plantation, we were received with all the demonstrations of tenderness and affection by my husband's mother that were possible to be expressed. We lived here altogether, my mother-in-law, at my entreaty, continuing in the house, for she was too kind a mother to be parted with: my husband likewise continued the same as at first, and I thought myself the happiest creature alive, when an odd and surprising event put an end to all that felicity in a moment, and rendered my condition the most uncomfortable, if not the most miserable, in the world. My mother was a mighty cheerful, good-humoured old woman-I may call her old woman, for her son was above thirty--I say, she was very pleasant, good company, and used to entertain me in particular with abundance of stories to divert me, as well of the country we were in as of the people. Among the rest she often told me how the greatest part of the inhabitants of the colony came thither in very indifferent circumstances from England; that, generally speaking, they were of two sorts, either, first, such as were brought over by masters of ships to be sold as servants :-"Such we call them, my dear," says she, "but they are more properly called slaves." Or second, such as are transported from Newgate and other prisons, after having been found guilty of felony and other crimes punishable with death. || and rogues made by that one prison of Newgate, than by all the clubs and societies of villains in the nation; it is that cursed place," says my mother, "that half peoples this colony.' Here she went on with her own story so long and in so particular a manner, that I began to "When they come here," says she, "we make be very uneasy, but coming to one particular no difference, the planters buy them and they that required teling her name, I thought I should work together in the field till their time is out; || have sunk down in the place. She perceived I when it is expired," said she, "they have en- was out of order, and asked me if I was not well, couragement given them to plant for themselves, and what ailed me? I told her I was so affected for they have a certain number of acres of land with the melancholy story she had told, and the allotted them by the country, and they go to work || terrible things she had gone through, that it had to clear and cure the land, and then to plant it overcome me, and I begged of her to talk no with tobacco and corn for their own use; and as more of it. the tradesmen and merchants will trust them with tools and clothes and other necessaries upon the credit of their crop before it is grown, so they again plant every year a little more than the year before, and so buy whatever they want with the crop that is before them." "Hence, child," said she, "many a Newgate bird becomes a great man, and we have," continued she, "several justices of the peace, officers of the train bands, and the magistrates of the towns they live in, that have been burnt in the hand." She was going on with that part of the story, when her own part in it interrupted her, and with a great deal of good humoured confidence she told me she was one of the second sort of inhabitants herself; that she came away openly, having ventured too far in a particular case, so that she was become a criminal; "and here is the mark of it, child," says she, and pulling off her glove, "look ye here," says she, turning up the palm of her hand, and showed me a very fine white arm and hand, but branded in the inside of the hand, as in such cases it must be. This story was very moving to me, but my mother, smiling, said, "You need not think such a thing strange, daughter, for as I told you, some of the best men in this country are burnt in the hand, and they are not ashamed to own it; there is Major says she, "he was an eminent pick-pocket; there is Justice Ba- -r, was a shoplifter; and both them were burnt in the hand, and I could name you several, such as they are." We had frequent discourses of this kind, and abundance of instances she gave me of the like; after some time, as she was telling some stories of one that was transported but a few weeks ago, 1 began in an intimate kind of way to ask her to tell me something of her own story, which she did with the utmost plainness and sincerity; how she had fallen into very ill company in London in her young days, occasioned by her mother sending her frequently to carry victuals and other relief to a kinswoman of hers who was a prisoner in Newgate, and who lay in a miserable starving condition, was afterwards condemned to be hanged, but having got a respite by pleading her belly, died afterwards in the prison. Here my mother-in-law ran out in a long account of the wicked practices in that dreadful place, and how it ruined more young people than all the towns beside; "and child," says my mother, "perhaps you may know little of it, or it may be, heard nothing about it," says she; "we all know here, that there are more thieves "Why, my dear," says she, very kindly, “what need these things trouble you? These passages were long before your time, and they give me no trouble at all now; nay I look back on them with a particular satisfaction, as they have been a means to bring me to this place?" Then she went on to tell me how she very luckily fell into a good family, where behaving herself well, and her mistress dying, her master married her, by whom she had my husband and his sister, and that by her diligence and good management after her husband's death she had improved the plantations to such a degree as they then were, so that most of the estate was of her getting, not her husband's, for she had been a widow upwards of sixteen years. I heard this part of the story with very little attention, because I wanted much to retire and give vent to my passions, which I did soon after, and let any one judge what must be the anguish of my mind when I came to reflect that this was certainly no more or less than my own mother, and I had now had two children, and was now big with another by my own brother, and lay with him still every night. I was now the most unhappy of all women in the world. O, had the story never been told me all had been well; it had been no crime to have lain with my husband, since as to his being my relation I had known nothing of it. I had now such a load on my mind that it kept me perpetually waking; to reveal it, which would have been some ease to me, I could not find would be to any purpose, and yet to conceal it would be the next to impossible; nay, I did not doubt but I should talk of it in my sleep and tell my husband of it whether I would or no; if I discovered it the least thing I could expect was to lose my husband, for he was too nice and too honest a man to have continued my husband after he had known I had been his sister, so that I was perplexed to the last degree. I leave it to any one to judge what difficulties were presented to my view. I was away from my native country, at a distance prodigious, and the return to me unpassable; I lived very well, but in a circumstance unsufferable in itself. If I had discovered myself to my mother it might be difficult to convince her of the particulars, and I had no way to prove them. On the other hand, if she had questioned or doubted ine I had been undone, for the bare suggestion would have immediately separated me from my husband, without gaining my mother or him, who would have been neither a husband or brother; so that between the surprise on one hand and the uncertainty on the other, I had been sure to be undone. In the mean time, as I was but too sure of the fact, I lived therefore in an open avowed incest and whoredom, and all under the appearance of an honest wife and though I was not so much touched with the crime of it, yet the action had something in it shocking to nature, and made my husband, as he thought himself, even nauseous to me. However, upon the most sedate consideration, I resolved that it was absolutely necessary to conceal it all, and not to make the least discovery of it either to mother or husband; and thus I lived with the greatest pressure imaginable for three years more, but had no more children. During this time my mother used to be frequently telling me old stories of her former adventures, which, however, were no way pleasant to me; for by it, though she did not tell it me in plain terms, yet I could easily understand, joined with what I had heard myself, of my first tutors, that in her younger days she had been both whore and thief; but I verily believe she had lived to repent sincerely of both, and that then she was a very pious, sober and religious woman. Well, let her life have been what it would then, it was certain that my life was very uneasy to me; for I lived, as I have said, but in the worst sort of whoredom, and as I could expect no good of it, so really no good issue came of it, and all my seeming prosperity wore off and ended in misery and destruction. It was sometime indeed before it came to this; for, but I know not by what ill fate guided, everything went wrong with us afterwards, and that which was worse, my husband grew strangely altered; froward, jealous, and unkind; and I was as impatient of bearing his carriage as the carriage was unreasonable and unjust. These things proceeded so far, that we came at last to be on such ill terms with one another, that I claimed a promise of him which he entered willingly into with me, when I consented to come from England with him, viz., that if I found the country not to agree with me, or that I did not like to live there, I should come away to England again when I pleased, giving him a years' warning to settle his affairs. I say I now claimed this promise of him, and I must confess I did it not in the most obliging terms neither; but I insisted that he treated me ill, that I was remote from my friends, and could do myself no justice, and that he was jealous without cause, my conversation having been unblameable, and he having no pretence for it; and that to remove to England would take away all occasion from him. I insisted so peremptorily upon it, that he could not avoid coming to a point, either to keep his word with me or to break it; and this, notwithstanding he used all the skill he was master of, and employed his mother and other agents to prevail with me to alter my resolutions; indeed the bottom of the thing lay at my heart, and that made all his endeavours fruitless, for my heart was alienated from him as a husband; 1 loathed the thoughts of bedding with him, and used a thousand pretences of illness and humour to prevent his touching me, fearing nothing more than to be with child again by him, which, to be sure, would have prevented, or at least delayed, my going over to England. However, at last I put him so out of humour, that he took up a rash and fatal resolution that, in short, I should not go to England; and though he had promised me, yet it was an unreasonable thing for me to desire it, that it would be ruinous to his affairs, would unhinge his whole family, and be next to an undoing him in the world; that, therefore, I ought not to desire it of him, and that no wife in the world that valued her family and her husband's prosperity would insist upon such a thing. This plunged me again; for when I considered the thing calmly, and took my husband, as he really was, a diligent careful man in the main work of laying up an estate for his children, and that he knew nothing of the dreadfui circum. stances that he was in; I could not but confess to myself that my proposal was very unreasonable, and what no wife that had the good of her family at heart would have desired. But my discontents were of another nature; I looked upon him no longer as a hushand, but as a near relation, the son of my own mother, and I resolved some how or other to be clear of him, but which way I did not know, nor did it seem possible. It is said by the ill-natured world of our sex, that if we are set on a thing, it is impossible to turn us from our resolutions: in short, I never ceased poring upon the means to bring to pass my voyage, and came that length with my husband at last, as to propose going without him. This provoked him to the last degree, and he called me not only an unkind wife, but an unnatural mother, and asked me how I could entertain such a thought without horror, as that of leaving my two children (for one was dead) without a mother, and to be brought up by strangers, and never to see them more? It was true, had things been right, I should not have done it, but now, it was my real desire never to see them, or him either, any more; and as to the charge of unnatural I could easily answer it to myself, while I knew that the whole relation was unnatural in the highest degree in the world. However it was plain there was no bringing my husband to anything; he would neither go with me, or let me go without him, and it was quite out of my power to stir without his consent, as any one that knows the constitution or the country I was in, knows very well. We had many family quarrels about it, and they began in time to grow up to a danger ous height; for as I was quite estranged from my husband, as he was called, in affection, so I took no heed to my words, but sometimes gave him language that was provoking. And, in short, I strove all I could to bring him to a parting with me, which was what above all things in the world I desired most. He took my carriage very ill, and indeed he might well do so, for at last I refused to bed with him, and carrying on the breach upon all occasions to extremity, he told me once he thought I was mad, and if I did not alter my conduct, he would put me under cure; that is to say, into a madhouse. I told him he should MOLL FLANDERS. find I was far enough from being mad, and that it was not in his power, or any other villains, to murder me. I confess at the same time I was heartily frightened at his thoughts of putting me into a madhouse, which would at once have destroyed all the possibility of breaking the truth out, whatever the occasion might be; for that then no one would have given credit to a word of it. This therefore brought me to a resolution, He began with a calm expostulation upon my as My blood was now fired to the utmost, though I knew what he had said was very true, and nothing could appear more provoked; I told him for his fair means and his foul, they were equally contemned by me; that for my going to England, I was resolved on it come what would; and that as to treating him not like a husband, and not showing myself a mother to my children, there might be something more in it than he understood at present; but, for his farther consideration, I thought fit to tell him thus much, that he neither was my lawful husband, nor they lawful children, and that I had reason to regard neither of them more than I did. I confess I was moved to pity him when I him; when he recovered from that, he grew However it went off again, and he recovered, I interrupted him, and told him I was sorry I had gone so far, since I saw what disorder it put him into, but I desired him not to talk to me of explanations, for that would but make things worse. This heightened his impatience, and indeed perplexed him beyond all bearing; for now he began to suspect that there was some mystery yet unfolded, but could not make the least guess All that run in at the real particulars of it. his brain was, that I had another husband alive, which I could not say in fact might not be true; but I assured him, however, there was not the least of that in it. And indeed, as to my other husband he was effectually dead in law to me, and had told me I should look on him as such, SO I had not the least uneasiness on that score. But now I found the thing too far gone to conceal it much longer, and my husband himself gave me an opportunity to ease myself of the secret much to my satisfaction. He had laboured with me three or four weeks, but to no purpose, only to tell him, whether I had spoken those words only as the effect of passion, or to put him in a passion; or whether there was any thing of truth in the bottom of them? But I continued inflexible, and would explain nothing, unless he would first consent to my going to England, which he would never do, he said while he lived; on the other hand I said it was in my power to make him willing when I pleased, nay, to make him entreat me to go; and this increased his curiosity, and made him importunate to the highest degree. But it was all to no purpose. At length he tells all this story to his mother, and sets her upon me to get the main secret out of me, and she used her utmost skill with me indeed; but I put her to a full stop at once, by telling her that the reason and mystery of the whole matter lay in herself, and that it was my respect to her that had made me conceal it, and that in short I could go no farther, and therefore conjured her not to insist upon it. She was struck dumb at this suggestion, and could not tell what to say or to think; but laying aside the supposition as a policy of mine, continued her importunity on account of her son, and if possible to make up the breach between us two. "As to that, I told her, that it was indeed a good design in her, but that it was impossible to be done; and that if I should reveal to her the truth of what she desired, she would grant it to be impossible, and cease to desire it." At last I seemed to be prevailed on by her importunity, and told her I dared trust her with a secret of the greatest importance, and she would soon see that it was so, and that I would consent to lodge it in her breast, if she would engage solemnly not to acquaint her son with it without my consent. She was long in promising this part, but rather than not come at the main secret she agreed to that too, and after a great many other preliminaries, I began and told her the whole story. First, I told her how much she was concerned in all the unhappy breach which had happened between her son and me, by telling me her own story, and her London name; and that the surprise she saw I was in, was upon that occasion: then I told her my own story and my name, and |