Miss Matthews's civility, and then renewed his story.

"We were upon the footing of lovers; and Amelia threw off her reserve more and more, till at length I found all that return of my affection which the tenderest lover can require. "My situation would now have been a paradise, had not my happiness been interrupted with the same reflections I have already mentioned; had I not, in short, concluded, that I must derive all my joys from the almost certain ruin of that dear creature to whom I should owe them.

"This thought haunted me night and day, till I at last grew unable to support it. I there fore resolved, in the strongest manner, to lay it before Amelia.

"One evening, then, after the highest professions of the most disinterested love, in which Heaven knows my sincerity, I took an occassion to speak to Amelia in the following manner :Too true is it, I am afraid, my dearest creature, that the highest human happiness is imperfect. How rich would be my cup, was it not for one poisonous drop which embitters the whole! O, Amelia, what must be the consequence of my ever having the honour to call you mine! You know my situation in life, and you know your own. I have nothing more than the poor provision of an ensign's commission to depend on; your sole dependance is on your mother. Should any act of disobedience defeat your expectations, how wretched must your lot be with me! O, Amelia, how ghastly an object to my mind is the apprehension of your distress! Can I bear to reflect a moment on the certainty of your foregoing all the conveniences of life; on the possibility of your suffering all its most dreadful inconveniences! What must be my misery, then, to see you in such a situation, and to upbraid myself with being the accursed cause of bringing you to it! Suppose, too, in such a season, I should be summoned from you; could I submit to see you encounter all the hazards, the fatigues, of war with me? You could not yourself, however willing, support them a single campaign. What then! must I leave you to starve alone, deprived of the tenderness of a husband; deprived, too, of the tenderness of the best of mothers, through my means? a woman most dear to me, for being the parent, the nurse, and the friend of my Amelia! But, O, my sweet creature! carry your thoughts a little farther. Think of the tenderest consequences, the dearest pledges, of our love! Can I bear to think of entailing beggary on the posterity of my Amelia? on our-O, Heavens! on our children! On the other side, (is it possible even to mention the word?) I will not, must not, cannot, cannot part with you! What must we do, Amelia? It is now I sincerely ask your advice. What advice can I give you,'

said she, in such an alternative? Would to Heaven we had never met.'

"These words were accompanied with a sigh, and a look inexpressibly tender, the tears, at the same time, overflowing all her lovely cheeks. I was endeavouring to reply, when I was interrupted by what soon put an end to the scene.

"Our amour had already been buzzed all over the town; and it came at last to the ears of Mrs Harris. I had, indeed, observed of late a great alteration in that lady's behaviour towards me, whenever I visited at the house; nor could I for a long time, before this evening, ever obtain a private interview with Amelia; and now, it seems, I owed it to her mother's intention of overhearing all that passed between

us.

"At the period, then, above mentioned, Mrs Harris burst from the closet where she had hid herself, and surprised her daughter reclining on my bosom, in all that tender sorrow I have just described. I will not attempt to paint the rage of the mother, or the daughter's confusion, or my own. 'Here are very fine doings, indeed!' cries Mrs Harris: You have made a noble use, Amelia, of my indulgence, and the trust I reposed in you. As for you, Mr Booth, I will not accuse you; you have used my child as I ought to have expected. I may thank myself for what hath happened:' with much more of the same kind, before she would suffer me to speak. But at last I obtained a hearing, and offered to excuse my poor Amelia, who was ready to sink into the earth under the oppres sion of grief, by taking as much blame as I could on myself. Mrs Harris answered, 'No, sir; I must say you are innocent in comparison with her. Nay, I can say, I have heard you use dissuasive arguments; and, I promise you, they are of weight. I have, I thank Heaven, one dutiful child, and I shall henceforth think her my only one.' She then forced the poor, trembling, fainting Amelia out of the room; which when she had done, she began very coolly to reason with me on the folly, as well as iniquity, which I had been guilty of; and repeated to me almost every word I had before urged to her daughter. In fine, she at last obtained of me a promise that I would soon go to my regiment, and submit to any misery, rather than that of being the ruin of Amelia.

"I now, for many days, endured the greatest torments which the human mind is, I believe, capable of feeling; and I can honestly say, Í tried all the means, and applied every argument which I could raise, to cure me of my love; and, to make these the more effectual, I spent every night in walking backwards and forwards in the sight of Mrs Harris's house, where I never failed to find some object or other which raised some tender idea of my lovely Amelia, and almost drove me to distraction."

took me by the hand, and burst forth into the warmest commendations of the sense and generosity which, he was pleased to say, discovered themselves in my speech. You know, madam, his strong and singular way of expressing himself on all occasions, especially when he is affected with any thing. 'Sir,' said he, ' if I knew half a dozen such instances in the army, the painter should put red liveries upon all the saints in my closet.'

"From this instant, the Doctor told me, he had become my friend and zealous advocate with Mrs Harris; on whom he had at last prevailed, though not without the greatest difficulty, to consent to my marrying Amelia, upon condition that I settled every penny which the mother should lay down; and that she would retain a certain sum in her hands, which she would at any time deposit for my advancement in the

army.

"You will, I hope, madam, conceive, that I made no hesitation at these conditions; nor need I mention the joy which I felt on this occasion, or the acknowledgment I paid the Doctor, who is indeed, as you say, one of the best of men.

"The next morning I had permission to visit Amelia, who received me in such a manner, that I now concluded my happiness to be complete.

"Every thing was now agreed on all sides, and lawyers employed to prepare the writings, when an unexpected cloud arose suddenly in our serene sky, and all our joys were obscured

in a moment.

"When matters were, as I apprehended, drawing near a conclusion, I received an express, that a sister, whom I tenderly loved, was seized with a violent fever, and earnestly desired me to come to her. I immediately obeyed the summons, though it was then about two in the morning, without staying even to take leave of Amelia, for whom I left a short billet, acquainting her with the reason of my absence.

"The gentleman's house, where my sister then was, stood at fifty miles distance; and, though Lused the utmost expedition, the unmerciful distemper had, before my arrival, entirely deprived the poor girl of her senses, as it soon after did of her life.

"Not all the love I bore Amelia, nor the tumultuous delight with which the approaching hour of possessing her filled my heart, could, for a while, allay my grief at the loss of my beloved Nancy. Upon my soul, I cannot yet mention her name without tears. Never brother and sister had, I believe, a higher friendship for each other. Poor dear girl! whilst I sat by her in her light-headed fits, she repeated scarce any other name but mine; and it plainly appeared, that when her dear reason was ravished away from her, it had left my image on her fancy, and that the last use she had made of it was to

think on me. 'Send for my dear Billy imme diately,' she cried; I know he will come to me in a moment. Will nobody fetch him to me? Pray don't kill me before I see him once more! You durst not use me so if he was here.' Every accent still rings in my ears. Oh, heavens! to hear this, and, at the same time, to see the poor delirious creature deriving the greatest horrors from my sight, and mistaking me for a highwayman who had, a little before, robbed her! But I ask your pardon; the sensations I felt are to be known only from experience, and to you must appear dull and insipid. At last she seemed for a moment to know me, and cried, 'O, heavens! my dearest brother!' upon which she fell into immediate convulsions, and died away in my arms."

"

Here Booth stopped a moment, and wiped his eyes; and Miss Matthews, perhaps out of complaisance, wiped hers.

CHAP. V.

Containing strange revolutions of Fortune. BOOTH proceeded thus:

"This loss, perhaps, madam, you will think had made me miserable enough; but fortune did not think so: for, on the day when my Nancy was to be buried, a courier arrived from Dr Harrison,with a letter, in which the Doctor acquainted me, that he was just come from Mrs Harris, when he dispatched the express; and earnestly desired me to return the very instant I received his letter, as I valued Amelia. Though, if the daughter,' added he, should take after her mother, (as most of them do) it will be, perhaps, wiser in you to stay away.'

"I presently sent for the messenger into my room, and, with much difficulty, extorted from him, that a great squire, in his coach and six, was come to Mrs Harris's, and that the whole town said he was shortly to be married to Amelia.

"I now soon perceived how much superior my love for Amelia was to every other passion: poor Nancy's idea disappeared in a moment: I quit ted the dear lifeless corpse, over which I had shed a thousand tears, left the care of the funeral to others, and posted, I may almost say flew, back to Amelia, and alighted at the Doctor's house, as he had desired me in his letter.

"The good man presently acquainted me with what had happened in my absence. Mr Winckworth had, it seems, arrived the very day of my departure, with a grand equipage, and, without delay, had made formal proposals to Mrs Harris, offering to settle any part of his vast estate, in whatever manner she pleased, on Amelia. These proposals the old lady had, without any deliberation, accepted, and had insisted, in the most

violent manner, on her daughter's compliance, which Amelia had as peremptorily refused to give; insisting, on her part, on the consent which her mother had before given to our marriage, in which she was heartily seconded by the Doctor, who declared to her, as he now did to me, that we ought as much to be esteemed man and wife, as if the ceremony had already past between us.

"These remonstrances, the Doctor told me, had worked no effect on Mrs Harris, who still persisted in her avowed resolution of marrying her daughter to Winckworth, whom the Doctor had likewise attacked, telling him, that he was paying his addresses to another man's wife; but all to no purpose: the young gentleman was too much in love to hearken to any dissuasives.

"We now entered into a consultation what means to employ. The Doctor earnestly protested against any violence to be offered to the person of Winckworth, which, I believe, I had rashly threatened; declaring, that if I made any attempt of that kind, he would for ever abandon my cause. I made him a solemn promise of forbearance. At last, he determined to pay another visit to Mrs Harris, and if he found her obdurate, he said he thought himself at liberty to join us together without any further consent of the mother; which every parent, he said, had a right to refuse, but not to retract when given, unless the party himself, by some conduct of his,

gave a reason.

"The Doctor having made his visit with no better success than before, the matter now debated was, how to get possession of Amelia by stratagem: for she was now a closer prisoner than ever, was her mother's bedfellow by night, and never out of her sight by day.

"While we were deliberating on this point, a wine-merchant of the town came to visit the Doctor, to inform him that he had just bottled off a hogshead of excellent old port, of which he offered to spare him a hamper, saying, that he was that day to send in twelve dozen to Mrs Harris.

"The Doctor now smiled at a conceit which came into his head: and taking me aside, asked me if I had love enough for the young lady to venture into the house in a hamper. I joyfully leapt at the proposal, to which the merchant, at the Doctor's intercession, consented; for I believe, madam, you know the great authority which that worthy man had over the whole town. The Doctor, moreover, promised to procure a licence, and to perform the office for us at his house, if I could find any means of conveying Amelia thither.

"In this hamper, then, I was carried to the house, and deposited in the entry, where I had not lain long, before I was again removed, and packed up in a cart, in order to be sent five miles into the country; for I heard the orders given as I lay in the entry; and there I likewise heard

that Amelia and her mother were to follow me the next morning.

66

The

I was unloaded from my cart, and set down with the rest of the lumber in a great hall. Here I remained above three hours, impatiently waiting for the evening, when I determined to quit a posture which was become very uneasy, and break my prison; but fortune contrived to release me sooner, by the following means. house where I now was had been left in the care of one maid-servant. This faithful creature came into the hall, with the footman who had driven the cart. A scene of the highest fondness having passed between them, the fellow proposed, and the maid consented, to open the hamper, and drink a bottle together, which they agreed their mistress would hardly miss in such a quantity. They presently began to execute their purpose. They opened the hamper, and, to their great surprise, discovered the contents.

"I took an immediate advantage of the consternation which appeared in the countenances of both the servants, and had sufficient presence of mind to improve the knowledge of those secrets to which I was privy. I told them, that it entirely depended on their behaviour to me, whether their mistress should ever be acquainted either with what they had done, or with what they had intended to do; for that if they would keep my secret, I would reciprocally keep theirs. I then acquainted them with my purpose of lying concealed in the house, in order to watch an opportunity of obtaining a private interview with Amelia.

"In the situation in which these two delinquents stood, you may be assured it was not difficult for me to seal up their lips. In short, they agreed to whatever I proposed. I lay that evening in my dear Amelia's bedchamber, and was in the morning conveyed into an old lumber garret, where I was to wait till Amelia (whom the maid promised, on her arrival, to inform of my place of concealment) could find some opportunity of seeing me."

"I ask pardon for interrupting you," cries Miss Matthews; "but you bring to my remembrance a foolish story which I heard at that time, though at a great distance from you, that an officer had, in confederacy with Miss Harris, broke open her mother's cellar, and stole away a great quantity of her wine. I mention it only to shew you what sort of foundations most stories have."

Booth told her he had heard some such thing himself, and then continued his story, as in the next chapter.

CHAP. VI.

Containing many surprising Adventures.

"HERE," continued he, "I remained the whole day, in hopes of a happiness, the expected ap

proach of which gave me such delight, that I would not have exchanged my poor lodgings for the finest palace in the universe.

"A little after it was dark, Mrs Harris arrived, together with Amelia and her sister. I cannot express how much my heart now began to flutter; for, as my hopes every moment increased, strange fears, which I had not felt before, now began to intermingle with them.

"When I had continued full two hours in these circumstances, I heard a woman's step tripping up stairs, which I fondly hoped was my Amelia; but, all on a sudden, the door flew open, and Mrs Harris herself appeared at it, with a countenance pale as death, her whole body trembling, I suppose, with anger. She fell upon me in the most bitter language. It is not necessary to repeat what she said, nor indeed can I, I was so shocked and confounded on the occasion.-In a word, the scene ended with my departure without seeing Amelia.”

"And pray," cries Miss Matthews, "how happened this unfortunate discovery?"

Booth answered," that the lady at supper ordered a bottle of wine, which neither myself," said he, "nor the servants, had presence of mind to provide. Being told there was none in the house, though she had been before informed that the things came all safe, she had sent for the maid, who, being unable to devise any excuse, had fallen on her knees, and, after confess ing her design of opening a bottle, which she imputed to the fellow, betrayed poor me to her

mistress.

"Well, madam, after a lecture of about a quarter of an hour's duration from Mrs Harris, I suffered her to conduct me to the outward gate of her court-yard, whence I set forward in a disconsolate condition of mind, towards my lodgings. I had five miles to walk in a dark and rainy night; but how can I mention these trifling circumstances as any aggravation to my disappointment?"

"How was it possible," cries Miss Matthews, "that you could be got out of the house with out seeing Miss Harris?"

"I assure you, madam," answered Booth, "I have often wondered at it myself; but my spirits were so much sunk at the sight of her mother, that no man was ever a greater coward than I was at this instant. Indeed, I believe my tender concern for the terrors of Amelia were the principal cause of my submission. However it was, I left the house, and walked about a hundred yards, when, at the corner of the garden wall, a female voice, in a whisper, cried out, Mr Booth.' The person was extremely near me, but it was so dark I could scarce see her; nor did I, in the confusion I was in, immediate ly recognize the voice. I answered in a line of Congreve's, which burst from my lips spontaneously; for I am sure I had no intention to quote plays at that time;

"Who calls the wretched thing that was Al-
phonso?'

Upon which a woman leapt into my arms, crying out,-'O! it is indeed my Alphonso, my only Alphonso!'-O Miss Matthews! guess what I felt when I found I had my Amelia in my arms! I embraced her with an ecstasy not to be described, at the same instant pouring a thousand tendernesses into her ears; at least if I could express so many to her in a minute; for in that time the alarm began at the house: Mrs Harris had missed her daughter, and the court was presently full of lights, and noises of all kinds.

"I now lifted Amelia over a gate, and jumping after, we crept along together by the side of a hedge, a different way from what led to the town, as I imagined that would be the road through which they would pursue us. In this opinion I was right; for we heard them pass along that road, and the voice of Mrs Harris herself, who ran with the rest, notwithstanding the darkness and the rain. By these means we luckily made our escape, and clambering over hedge and ditch, my Amelia performing the part of a heroine all the way, we at length arrived at a little green lane, where stood a vast spreading oak, under which we sheltered ourselves from a violent storm.

"When this was over, and the moon began to appear, Amelia declared she knew very well where she was; and a little farther, striking into another lane, to the right, she said that would

lead us to a house where we should be both safe and unsuspected. I followed her directions, and we at length came to a little cottage about three miles distant from Mrs Harris's house.

"As it now rained very violently, we entered this cottage, in which we espied a light, without any ceremony. Here we found an elderly woman, sitting by herself at a little fire, who had no sooner viewed us, than she instantly sprung from her seat, and, starting back, gave the strongest tokens of amazement; upon which Amelia said, 'Be not surprised, nurse; though you see me in a strange pickle, I own.' The old woman, after having several times blessed herself, and expressed the most tender concern for the lady who stood dripping before her, began to bestir herself in making up the fire; at the same time entreating Amelia that she might be permitted to furnish her with some clothes, which, she said, though not fine, were clean and wholesome, and much drier than her own. I seconded this motion so vehemently, that Amelia, though she declared herself under no apprehension of catching cold, (she hath, indeed, the best constitution in the world,) at last consented, and I retired without doors, under a shade, to give my angel an opportunity of dressing herself in the only room which the cottage afforded below stairs.

"At my return into the room, Amelia insisted on my exchanging my coat for one which be