60 | _ A Chapter on Bachelors, &c. [Juvy, 
determined to take this opportunity of declaring myself; so mustering 
all the courage I could lay hands on, I started off, highly excited, - 
towards their abode. Well, on reaching the house I found the old lady 
confined to her bed, and the daughter seated alone in the drawing-room. 
It was a warm pleasant summer-evening, just dusky enough to hide 
confusion, yet not sufficiently so to require candles. Nothing could be 
more propitious ; hid beneath the mask of twilight I chatted and sighed 
incessantly : hastening perpetually towards the object of my visit, yet 
strange to say, from some unaccountable nervousness, flying off when- 
ever it seemed to be understood. This continued upwards of an hour ; 
I had even begun to render myself somewhat intelligible, when, justas I 
was proceeding to pop the question, the door opened, and in came the 
infernal candles. “My face—for the life of me I cannot tell you why— 
was instantly as red as scarlet; had I even committed murder I could 
not have appeared more guilty, while my astonished companion (women 
in such cases have an almost miraculous instinct), after looking in my 
face for an instant, as much as to say, “at last I comprehend you,” 
turned off the conversation, and never again gave me an opportunity of 
renewing it. I saw her once or twice afterwards; but, she always 
looked at me, as I thought, with pity blended with contempt, so I gra- 
dually cut the connection, and returned once again to solitude. Mise- 
rable recollection! I must dispatch another bumper ! 
The reader will scarcely believe that, after these two failures, I 
should ever have had courage to try a third. It so happened, however, 
that like men grown desperate by gaming, the more the chances turned 
against me, the more I resolved to persevere. I was thirty when the 
last mishap took place ; I was now forty-three ; somewhat, but not much, 
the worse for wear; indeed, I take forty to be a very sensible age, 
quite young enough for love, and old enough for experience. At forty 
a man is in his prime, and though perhaps he may be going down hill, 
yet it is slowly, in a broad-wheeled waggon; whereas, at fifty, he 
gallops down the descent in a light post-coach, with time on the box, 
and decay on the guard-seat behind him. At forty, Casar was for the 
first time in love! Courage then, I exclaimed, the third throw is always 
a lucky one; and so indeed it proved—but I must not anticipate. 
Near the house where I vegetated, dwelt a certain pretty widow, who 
I thought had at times evinced a partiality for me. Assuredly an old 
bachelor is the vainest dog living! I had no more reason for fancying 
any such whim,. than I had for fancying myself an Adonis; yet it so 
happened, that somehow or other I became convinced of her attach- 
ment. Circumstances favoured the delusion; when we met I was 
received with a smile; when we parted, methought, with a sigh; so I 
resolved, come what might, to push matters to a crisis. With this view 
I began by beating about the bush, yet blushing as before, when under- 
stood; I talked of the pleasures of sentiment, of home, of domestic 
attachment, of infantine pledges, &c., to all of which she answered, 
“certainly, sir, you're quite right ;” and, in fact, am convinced that I 
should have made a conquest, only that the night before my intended 
declaration, she happened to run off with my footman, a fellow with 
about as much sentiment in his composition as a baked leg of mutton, 
This last misfortune put the closing seal to my exploits. I have ever 
since lived in complete seclusion, shuddering at the very sight of a 
woman, yet indulging, like Rousseau, in the wildest reveries concerning 
oe a 
