Produced by Louise Hope, David Starner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Transcriber's Note: The texts cited use a variety of long and short dashes, generally with no relationship to the number of letters omitted. For this e-text, short dashes are shown as separated hyphens, while longer dashes are shown as connected hyphens: D - - - n _Molley H----ns_ for her Pride. Groups of three vertical braces } represent a single brace encompassing three rhymed line.] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The Augustan Reprint Society THE MERRY-THOUGHT: or, the Glass-Window and Bog-House MISCELLANY. Part I (_1731_) _Introduction by_ GEORGE R. GUFFEY Publication Number _216_ WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY University of California, Los Angeles _1982_ GENERAL EDITOR David Stuart Rodes, _University of California, Los Angeles_ EDITORS Charles L. Batten, _University of California, Los Angeles_ George Robert Guffey, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Maximillian E. Novak, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Thomas Wright, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_ ADVISORY EDITORS Ralph Cohen, _University of Virginia_ William E. Conway, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_ Vinton A. Dearing, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Arthur Friedman, _University of Chicago_ Louis A. Landa, _Princeton University_ Earl Miner, _Princeton University_ Samuel H. Monk, _University of Minnesota_ James Sutherland, _University College, London_ Robert Vosper, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_ CORRESPONDING SECRETARY Beverly J. Onley, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_ EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Frances M. Reed, _University of California, Los Angeles_ INTRODUCTION For modern readers, one of the most intriguing scenes in Daniel Defoe's _Moll Flanders_ (1722) occurs during the courtship of Moll by the man who is to become her third husband. Aware that the eligible men of her day have little interest in prospective wives with small or nonexistent fortunes, Moll slyly devises a plan to keep her relative poverty a secret from the charming and (as she has every reason to believe) wealthy plantation owner who has fallen in love with her. To divert attention from her own financial condition, she repeatedly suggests that he has been courting her only for her money. Again and again he protests his love. Over and over she pretends to doubt his sincerity. After a series of exhausting confrontations, Moll's lover begins what is to us a novel kind of dialogue: One morning he pulls off his diamond ring and writes upon the glass of the sash in my chamber this line: You I love and you alone. I read it and asked him to lend me the ring, with which I wrote under it thus: And so in love says every one.