Page:The Adventures of David Simple (1904).djvu/122

 common woman, and yet be unmoved, when even Cato bled for his country. That is no wonder, I assure you, ladies, for I once heard my Lady Know-all, positively affirm George Barnwell to be one of the best things that ever was wrote; for that nature is nature in whatever station it is placed; and that she could be as much affected with the distress of a man in low life, as if he was a lord or a duke. And what is yet more amazing is, that the time she chooses to weep most, is just as he has killed the man who prays for him in the agonies of death; and then only, because he whines over him, and seems sensible of what he has done, she must shed tears for a wretch whom everybody of either sense or goodness, would wish to crush, and make ten times more miserable than he is.

Indeed that lady is the most affected creature that ever I knew, she and Lady True-wit think no one can equal them; they have taken a fancy to set up the author of George Barnwell for a writer, though certainly he writes the worst language in the world: there is a little thing of his, called, The Fatal Curiosity, which, for my part, I know not what to make of; and they run about crying it up, as if Shakespeare himself might have wrote it. Certainly that fellow must be something very low, for his distresses always arise from poverty; and then he brings his wicked wretches, who are to be tempted for money to some monstrous action, which he would have his audience pity them for. She would have talked on more in this strain, but was interrupted by another lady, who assured the company she had the most ridiculous thing to tell them of the two ladies they were talking of, in the world: "For," continued she, "I was once at Don