"She came, she reigned, but still disdained The crowd's applause and fancy; Quoth Fortune, 'Then, content ye, men, With pretty, witty Nancy.'" Every morning lovers were at our feet (on paper). They wrote letters enjoining me "by those soft killing eyes" (which rhymed with "sighs") to take pity on their misery, or to let them die. You would have thought, to read their vows, that all the men in the town were in profound wretchedness. They could not sleep: they could no longer go abroad: they were wasting and pining away: they were the victims of a passion which was rapidly devouring them: Death, they said, would be welcomed as a Deliverer. Yet it will hardly be believed that, in spite of so dreadful an epidemic of low fever, no outward signs of it were visible in the town at all: the gentlemen were certainly fat and in good case: their hearts seemed merry within them: they laughed, made jokes, sang, and were jolly to outward show: their appetites were good: they were making (apparently) no preparations for demise. Their letters and verses were, however, anonymous, so that it was impossible to point with accuracy to any sufferer who thus dissembled. From information conveyed to me by Cicely Crump, I believe that the verses and letters came in great measure from the apprentices and shopmen employed by the mercers, haberdashers, hosiers, and drapers of the town--young men whose employment brings them constantly into the presence of ladies, but whose humble positions in the world forbid them to do anything more than worship at a great distance: yet their hearts are as inflammable as their betters, and their aspirations are sometimes above their rank, as witness the gallant elopement of Joshua Crump, Cicely's father, with Miss Jenny Medlicott, daughter of an alderman: then they find relief and assume a temporary dignity--as they fondly think--in writing anonymous love-letters. I think the letters must have come from these foolish and conceited young men, because I cannot understand how a gentleman who values his self-respect could so far humiliate himself as to write letters which he would be ashamed to sign, declaring himself the foolish victim of a foolish passion, and addressing a fellow-creature, a being like himself, with all the imperfections of humanity upon her, as an angel (which is blasphemous), and a sun of glory (which is nonsense), or a bright particular star (which is copied from the preface to the Bible). I confess that we liked the open compliments and public attentions of the gentlemen: they pleased us, and we took them in sober honesty for what they were worth--the base coin of gallantry rings as pleasantly sometimes as the guinea gold of love--but it is one thing to be called a goddess in the accepted language of exaggeration and mock humility commonly used in polite assemblies, and another to be addressed in a grovelling strain, seriously and humbly, as if one were the Lama of Thibet, or the great