Daniel Defoe

“ I should have received the mercy thankfully, and applied it soberly to the praise and honour of my Maker, whereas by this wicked course all the bounty and kindness of this gentleman became a snare to me, was a mere bait to the devil’s hook. I received his kindness at the dear expense of body and soul, mortgaging faith, religion, conscience, and modesty for (as I may call it) a morsel of bread, or, if you will, ruined my soul from a principle of gratitude and gave myself up to the devil to show myself grateful to my benefactor. ”

“ Oh let no woman slight the temptation that being generously delivered from trouble is to any spirit furnished with gratitude and just principles. This gentleman had freely and voluntarily delivered me from misery, from poverty, and rags; he had made me what I was, and put me into a way to be even more than I ever was, namely, to live happy and pleased, and on his bounty I depended. ”

“ We sat together talking of a thousand things, of what had been and what was to be, all the rest of the day, and in the evening he took his leave of me with a thousand expressions of kindness and tenderness and true affection to me, but offered not the least of what my maid Amy had suggested. ”

“ I don’t see anything in him yet that looks like it.” “As to that, madam,” says Amy, “I don’t see anything of it yet neither; but what should move a gentleman to take pity on us as he does?” “Nay,” says I, “that’s a hard thing too, that we should judge a man to be wicked because he’s charitable, and vicious because he’s kind.” “Oh, madam,” says Amy, “there’s abundance of charity begins in that vice, and he is not so unacquainted with things as not to know that poverty is the strongest incentive, a temptation against which no virtue is powerful enough to stand out ”

“ He calls you widow, and such indeed you are, for as my master has left you so many years, he is dead to be sure—at least he is dead to you, he is no husband—you are and ought to be free to marry who you will; and his wife being gone from him and refuses to lie with him, then he is a single man again as much as ever; and though you cannot bring the laws of the land to join you together, yet one refusing to do the once of a wife, and the other of a husband, you may certainly take one another fairly. ”

“ Amy here to you in all your distresses, I know she may be trusted with so honest a design as mine is, for, I assure you, I bear a proportioned regard to your maid too for her affection to you.”
Amy made him a curtsy, and the poor girl looked so confounded with joy that she could not speak, but her colour came and went, and every now and then she blushed as red as scarlet and the next minute looked as pale as death. Well, having said this, he sat down, made me sit down, and then drank to me and made me drink two glasses of wine together. “For,” says he, “you have need of it” ”

“ However, I was tight and clean, and in better plight than he had seen me in a great while, and he looked extremely pleased to see me so, for he said I looked so disconsolate and so afflicted before, that it grieved him to see me; and he bade me pluck up a good heart, for he hoped to put me in a condition to live in the world and be beholden to nobody. ”

“ As to honesty, I think honesty is out of the question when starvation is the case; are not we almost starved to death?”
“I am indeed,” said I, “and thou art for my sake; but to be a whore, Amy!”—and there I stopped.
“Dear madam,” says Amy, “if I will starve for your sake, I will be a whore or anything for your sake; why, I would die for you if I were put to it.”
“Why, that’s an excess of affection, Amy,” said I, “I never met with before; I wish I may be ever in condition to make some returns suitable. But, however, Amy, you shall not be a whore to him, to oblige him to be kind to me ”

“ Amy and I went to bed that night (for Amy lay with me) pretty early, but lay chatting almost all night about it, and the girl was so transported that she got up two or three times in the night and danced about the room in her shift; in short, the girl was half distracted with the joy of it, a testimony still of her violent affection for her mistress, in which no servant ever went beyond her. ”

“ With that he pulled out a silk purse which had three-score guineas in it, and threw them into my lap, and concluded all the rest of his discourse with kisses and protestations of his love, of which, indeed, I had abundant proof.
Pity human frailty, you that read of a woman reduced in her youth and prime to the utmost misery and distress, and raised again, as above, by the unexpected and surprising bounty of a stranger ”

“ We heard no more of him for two days, but the third day he came again; then he told me, with the same kindness, that he had ordered me a supply of household goods for the furnishing the house; that in particular he had sent me back all the goods that he had seized for rent, which consisted indeed of the best of my former furniture. ”

“ And I must own I’m of the same mind, else ’tis in the power of a whore, after she has jilted and abandoned her husband, to confine him from the pleasure as well as convenience of a woman all the days of his life, which would be very unreasonable and, as times go, not tolerable to all people ”

“ After supper he took me up into his chamber, where Amy had made a good fire, and there he pulled out a great many papers and spread them upon a little table, and then took me by the hand, and after kissing me very much he entered into a discourse of his circumstances and of mine, how they agreed in several things exactly; for example, that I was abandoned of a husband in the prime of my youth and vigour, and he of a wife in his middle age ”