'O yes: enough to grieve any penetrable heart. But I know no task more difficult than that of administering to their wants, without encouraging their vices. Of these wants I consider instruction as the greatest; and to that I pay the greatest attention. Food, cloathing, and disease are imperious necessities; and to leave them unprovided would be guilt incredible to speculation, did we not see it in hourly practice. But the poor are so misled, by the opinions they are taught to hold and the oppressions to which they are subject, that, by relieving these most urgent wants we are in danger of teaching them idleness, drunkenness, and servility. I do them the little good that I can, most willingly: but I consider the diffusion of knowledge, by which that which I call the moral system of mankind is to be improved, as the most effectual means of conferring happiness. Are you of that opinion?' 'I certainly am.' 'Then I cannot but think you intend to promote this beneficial plan.' 'I scarcely know my own intentions. They are unsettled, incoherent, and the dreams of delirium; rather than the system of a sage, such as you have imagined.' 'I wish we had been longer acquainted and were intimate enough to induce you to relate your history, and confide your thoughts to me, as to a friend; or, if you please, as to one who holds it a duty to offer aid, whenever he imagines it will answer a good end.' 'To offer aid is kind: but there are very few cases in which he that receives it is not mean and degraded. You however are actuated by a generous spirit; and, as you are inclined to listen, I will very willingly inform you of the chief incidents of a life that has already been considerably checkered, and the future prospects of which are sufficiently gloomy.' After this preface, I began my narrative; and succinctly related the principal of those events with which the reader already is acquainted. Nor did the state of my feelings and the strong sense of injury which was ever present to my imagination, when I came to recapitulate my adventures since I first left college, suffer me to colour with a negligent or a feeble hand. Some of the incidents necessarily induced me to mention Olivia, and betray my sentiments in part: which the questions of Mr. Evelyn, put with kindness, delicacy, and interest that was evidently unaffected, induced me at length wholly to reveal, with all the tenderness and the vehemence of passion. I was encouraged or rather impelled to this confidence by the emotions which Mr. Evelyn betrayed, in his countenance, voice, and manner. His hopes, his fears, and his affections, were so much in unison with my own, his eye so often glistened and his cheek so frequently glowed, that it was impossible for the heart not to open all its recesses, and pour out not only its complaints but its very follies.