Page:The Adventures of David Simple (1904).djvu/159

 could not, for a great while, any way account for this conduct. I thought, if she did not love me, she had no reason to have given herself any trouble about me ; and yet I could not think she could have used one for whom she had had the least regard in so cruel a manner. At last, I reflected, it must be owing to a love of tyranny; and as we are born in a country where there is no such thing as public legal slavery, people lay plots to draw in others to be their slaves, with the pretence of having an affection for them: and what is yet more unfortunate, they always choose the persons who are least able to bear it. It is the fierce mettled courser {who must be brought to their lure by fawning and stroking) that they love to wring, and gird the saddle on; whilst the mule, which seems born to bear their burdens, passes by them unheeded and neglected. I was caught, like the poor fish, by the bait which was treacherously extended for me, and did not observe the hook which was to pierce my heart, and be my destruction. You cannot imagine what I felt; for to be used ungratefully by any one I had conferred favours on, would have been nothing to me, in comparison of being ill-used by the person I thought myself obliged to. I was to have no passions, no inclinations of my own; but was to be turned into a piece of clock-work, which her ladyship was to wind up or let down as she pleased. I had resolution enough to have borne any consequence that might have attended my leaving her; but I could not bear the thoughts of even the imputation of ingratitude; for there are very few people who have any notion of obligations which are not pecuniary. But, in my opinion, those persons who give up their time, and sacrifice all their own inclinations, to the humours of others, cannot be overpaid by anything they can do for them. Men never think a slave obliged to them for giving him bread, when he has performed his task. And