The Captain was to meet me one evening at the Asylum chapel, from whence we were to go in our post-chaise to Richmond and pass the week. Little did I then imagine that the place of rendezvous for a criminal intrigue would prove the source of reformation from a desolate and sinful life. A sensible and pathetic discourse which I heard that night was the cause of my conversion. The worthy and pious gentleman who preached set forth in so striking and affecting a manner the sin and danger of a profligate course, that I was seized with all the horrors of a reproachable conscience. It was then my eyes were for the first time opened, and I saw my licentious and abandoned conduct in all its shocking and dread array. I was entirely lost to myself and drowned in a flood of tears, when the Captain approached my seat, without my perceiving him. He took hold of my hand, and enquired what was the matter with me. But I was incapable of making him any answer. He gave me his smelling-bottle, and was performing all the kind offices of a lover who finds his mistress in affliction. But I remained insensible to all he did or said, and we were at length left in the chapel quite alone.

            He handed me out, and was for putting me into the post-chaise, which was in waiting. But I declined it, and notwithstanding he exhausted all the rhetoric that could be used in such a cause, I remained inexorable to entreaty, and returned over the bridge to my lodging all alone. From this time I discontinued associating with any of my former acquaintance; never went to any public place except church, and for upwards of a twelvemonth passed a life that was not unworthy of a Christian.

            Nothing gave me now any sort of anxiety but the reflection that what I subsisted upon were the wages of prostitution. In these sentiments I would willingly have embraced any opportunity of gaining a livelihood in a manner suitable to my present way of thinking. I should have been happy to have disposed of all I was worth in the world in charity, if I could have had the least glimmering of hopes to pass the remainder of my days without control and without dependence. But as I was not so enthusiastically bigoted as to forget my past misfortunes, or the terrible situation a woman is in who is thus divested of the means of support, I did not pursue so very charitable a plan of reformation.

            Accident soon after threw into my way a tradesman, who was sensible without severity, and religious without ostentation, who had philanthropy enough to overlook the weaknesses and failings of mankind, where they were not blended with premeditated crimes, and to esteem a repenting sinner as much as a constant devotee. His sentiments and mine were so very concordant that an agreeable intimacy soon took place, and in the course of our conversations, I was frank enough to own the disagreeable part I had been obliged to act upon the theatre of life. This account which I gave of myself did not diminish his regard for me. He said he was convinced of the thorny paths through which a pretty woman had to move, and the difficulty there was for her to avoid the many snares that were constantly thrown out for her by the profligate and abandoned of the male sex, if she was not endued with more than human prudence.

            'But,' continued he, 'I am convinced by your frankness in acknowledging your former errors, and your present sentiments, that you will never pursue the same trade again. And to convince you that you have no way lessened yourself in my esteem by your sincerity, and that I am firmly of opinion that you are capable of making an honest and virtuous wife if you will accept of my hand, here it is. As to my heart,' he added with a sigh, 'that you have been possessed of for some time.'

            There was so much honest good-nature and genuine sentiment in this declaration, which at the same time was very agreeable to me, that I did not long play the prudish part but accepted of his proposal with as much cordiality as it was made.

            And now, reader, that I have brought you once more to a virtuous, honest plan of life, which alone can administer that balmy ease and satisfactory repose which we should be all desirous of obtaining, I shall leave you to contemplate these sheets, as I have at present other employment upon my hands than that of writing these pages, having all but this chapter been composed long before I entered into the holy and desirable state of matrimony. For I have now four children to look after, the youngest of whom is not a twelvemonth old. My eldest daughter reads and writes very well, and will, I hope, be an ornament to her sex, as she will, at least, have the advice of a mother to conduct her through this perilous world who, to her cost, has evinced the rocks and shoals which a female navigator must be so careful to avoid. And if any of my fair readers should be so lucky as to gain prudence and discretion enough to escape perdition by what they have learnt from these sheets, I shall think that the time I have employed in penning them has not been thrown away.

FINIS

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