When they had tired themselves with asking questions about the Negro queen, they then began to ask about myself, and how it happened I was not such a bear, and coarse in my manners and address, as the other seamen. To this I could give no other reply but that I had been educated when a child. They would fain know who were my father and mother, and in what station of life it had pleased God to place them; but I hardly need say, my dear Madam, to you who are so well acquainted with my birth and parentage, that I would not disgrace my family by acknowledging that one of their sons was in a situation so unworthy; not that I thought at that time, nor do I think now, that I was so much to blame in preferring independence in a humble position, to the life that induced me to take the step which I did; but as I could not state who my family were without also stating why I had quitted them, I preserved silence, as I did not think that I had any right to communicate family secrets to strangers. The consequences of my first introduction to genteel society were very agreeable; I received many more invitations from the company assembled, notwithstanding that my sailor's attire but ill corresponded with the powdered wigs and silk waistcoats of the gentlemen, or the hoops and furbelows of satin, which set off the charms of the ladies. At first I did not care so much, but as I grew more at my ease, I felt ashamed of my dress, and the more so as the young foplings would put their glasses to their eyes, and look at me as if I were a monster. But supported as I was by the fair sex, I cared little for them. The ladies vowed that I was charming, and paid me much courtesy; indeed my vanity more than once made me suspect that I was something more than a mere favourite with one or two of them, one especially, a buxom young person, and very coquettish, who told me, as we were looking out of the bay-window of the withdrawing-room, that since I could be so secret with respect to what took place between the Negress queen and myself, I must be sure to command the good-will and favour of the ladies, who always admired discretion in so young and so handsome a man. But I was not to be seduced by this flattery, for somehow or another I had ever before me the French lady, and her conduct to me; and I had almost a dislike, or I should rather say I had imbibed an indifference, for the sex.