In the next place, when a woman is thus left desolate and void of
counsel, she is just like a bag of money or a jewel dropped on the
highway, which is a prey to the next comer; if a man of virtue and
upright principles happens to find it, he will have it cried, and the
owner may come to hear of it again; but how many times shall such a
thing fall into hands that will make no scruple of seizing it for their
own, to once that it shall come into good hands?
This was evidently my case, for I was now a loose, unguided creature,
and had no help, no assistance, no guide for my conduct; I knew what I
aimed at and what I wanted, but knew nothing how to pursue the end by
direct means. I wanted to be placed in a settle state of living, and
had I happened to meet with a sober, good husband, I should have been
as faithful and true a wife to him as virtue itself could have formed.
If I had been otherwise, the vice came in always at the door of
necessity, not at the door of inclination; and I understood too well,
by the want of it, what the value of a settled life was, to do anything
to forfeit the felicity of it; nay, I should have made the better wife
for all the difficulties I had passed through, by a great deal; nor did
I in any of the time that I had been a wife give my husbands the least
uneasiness on account of my behaviour.
But all this was nothing; I found no encouraging prospect. I waited; I
lived regularly, and with as much frugality as became my circumstances,
but nothing offered, nothing presented, and the main stock wasted
apace. What to do I knew not; the terror of approaching poverty lay
hard upon my spirits. I had some money, but where to place it I knew
not, nor would the interest of it maintain me, at least not in London.
At length a new scene opened. There was in the house where I lodged a
north-country woman that went for a gentlewoman, and nothing was more
frequent in her discourse than her account of the cheapness of
provisions, and the easy way of living in her country; how plentiful
and how cheap everything was, what good company they kept, and the
like; till at last I told her she almost tempted me to go and live in
her country; for I that was a widow, though I had sufficient to live
on, yet had no way of increasing it; and that I found I could not live
here under #100 a year, unless I kept no company, no servant, made no
appearance, and buried myself in privacy, as if I was obliged to it by
necessity.