Page:Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1749, vol. 2).pdf/217

 leading-strings, and thought herself so much obliged to any who would take the pains to think for her, and guide her, that with a very little management, she was capable of being made a most agreeable, nay, a most virtuous wife; for vice, it is probable, had never been her choice, or her fate, if it had not been for occasion, or example, or had she not depended less upon herself, than upon her circumstances: this presumption her conduct afterwards verified; for presently meeting with a match, that was ready cut and dry for her, with a neighbour's son of her own rank, and a young man of sense and order, who took her as the widow of one lost at sea, (for so it seems one of her gallants, whose name she had made free with, really was) she naturally struck into all the duties of her domestic, with as much simplicity of affection, with as much constancy and regularity, as if she had never swerv'd from a state of undebauch'd innocence from her youth.

These