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 He made suppers at my lodgings, where he brought several companions of his pleasures, with their mistresses, and by this means I got into a circle of acquaintance that soon strip'd me of all the remains of bashfulness and modesty which might be yet left of my country education, and were, to a just taste, perhaps, the greatest of my Charms.

We visited one another in form, and mimick'd, as near as we could, all the miseries, the follies, and impertinences of the women of quality, in the round of which they trifle away their time, without its ever entering into their little heads, that on earth there cannot subsist any thing more silly, more flat, more insipid and worthless, than, generally considered, their system of life is: they ought to treat the men as their tyrants indeed! were they to condemn them to it.

But tho', amongst the kept mistresses (and I was now acquainted with a good many, besides some useful matrons, who live by their connexions with them) I hardly