University of Virginia Library

Where are you, Harriot; and what
are you doing? Six long months absent from
the town! What can you find to beguile the
tedious hours? Life must be a burden to you!
How can you employ yourself? Employ, did I
say? Pho! I will not use so vulgar a term! I
meant amuse! Amusement surely is the prime
end of our existence! You have no plays, no
card-parties, nor assemblies that are worth mentioning!
Intolerably heavy must the lagging
wheels of time roll on! How shall I accelerate
them for you? A new novel may do something
towards it! I accordingly send you one, imported
in the last ships. Foreign, to be sure; else
it would not be worth attention. They have
attained to a far greater degree of refinement in
the old world, than we have in the new; and
are so perfectly acquainted with the passions,
that there is something extremely amusing and
interesting in their plots and counter-plots,
operating in various ways, till the dear creatures
are jumbled into matrimony in the prettiest
manner that can be conceived!

We, in this country, are too much in a state
of nature to write good novels yet. An American

novel is such a moral, sentimental thing,
that it is enough to give any body the vapours to
read one. Pray come to town as soon as possible,
and not dream away your best days in obscurity
and insignificance.

But this boarding school; this Harmony-Grove,
where you formerly resided, has given
you strange ideas of the world. With what
raptures I have heard you relate the dull scenes
in which you were concerned there! I am
afraid that your diseased taste has now come to a
crisis, and you have commenced prude in earnest!
But return to your city friends; and we will
lend our charitable assistance, in restoring you
to gaiety and pleasure.