LETTER XCII
But how I ramble!--Yet surely, Sir, you don't expect method or connection from your girl. The education of our sex will not permit that, where it is best. We are forced to struggle for knowledge, like the poor feeble infant in the month, who is pinned and fettered down upon the nurse's lap; and who, if its little arms happen, by chance, to escape its nurse's observation, and offer but to expand themselves, are immediately taken into custody, and pinioned down to their passive behaviour. So, when a poor girl, in spite of her narrow education, breaks out into notice, her genius is immediately tamed by trifling employments, lest, perhaps, she should become the envy of one sex, and the equal of the other. But you. Sir, act more nobly with your Pamela; for you throw in her way all opportunities of improvement; and she has only to regret, that she cannot make a better use of them, and, of consequence, render herself more worthy of your generous indulgence.
I know not how, Sir, to recover my thread; and so must break off with that delight which I always take when I come near the bottom of my letters to your dear self; because then I can boast of the honour which I have in being your ever dutiful,
P.B.