Not but the fellow's eye was upon me. I could observe him prying, endeavouring to search and probe me. But I came too well prepared. Instead of shrinking from the encounter, my brow contracted increasing indignation; and my voice grew louder, as I stood forth the champion of chaste virginity and sanctimonious wedlock!--The scene, in the very critical sense of the phrase, was high comedy!-- It was well, Fairfax, they went no farther than Paris: had either of them only reached Turin I had been half undone! And had they touched at Naples, Rome, Venice, or half a dozen other fair and flourishing cities, my character for a pretty behaved, demure, and virtuous gentleman had been irremediably ruined! Upon my soul I cannot put it out of my head!--Had you heard me remonstrate what a horrid thing it would be to have marriage destroyed, and us honest fellows turned loose among the virgins, from whom we should catch and ravish each a new damsel every new day, and had you seen what a fine serious undertaker's face I put upon the business, your heart would have chuckled! To the day of your death it would never have been forgotten! Perhaps you will wonder how I could draw such a doctrine from these spinners of hypothesis. I will tell you. I had heard them severally maintain--Try to guess what!--Not in seven years, though you were to do nothing else.--You I suppose like me have heard that liberty, security, and property are the three main pillars of political happiness?--Well then, these professors maintain that individual property is a general evil!--What is more, they maintain it by such arguments as would puzzle college, council, or senate to refute. But that I am determined never to torment my brain about such quips and quillets, may I turn Turk if they would not have made a convert of me, and have persuaded me that an estate of ten thousand a year was a very intolerable thing! My intention was to keep my countenance, but to laugh at them in my heart most incontinently. However, I soon found my side of the question was not so perfectly beyond all doubt, nor theirs quite so ridiculous as I had imagined. 'Tis true, I went predetermined to be convinced, and to take all they should tell me for gospel. I had a conclusion of my own to draw, and if I could but lead to that, I cared not how much I granted.