first had nothing selfish in it, was treated with contempt, and I was
ordered to pack up my clothes; and a few trinkets and books, given me by
the generous deceased, were contested, while they piously hoped, with a
reprobating shake of the head, 'that God would have mercy on his
sinful soul!' With some difficulty, I obtained my arrears of wages;
but asking--such is the spirit-grinding consequence of poverty and
infamy--for a character for honesty and economy, which God knows I
merited, I was told by this--why must I call her woman?--'that it would
go against her conscience to recommend a kept mistress.' Tears started
in my eyes, burning tears; for there are situations in which a wretch is
humbled by the contempt they are conscious they do not deserve.

"I returned to the metropolis; but the solitude of a poor lodging was
inconceivably dreary, after the society I had enjoyed. To be cut off
from human converse, now I had been taught to relish it, was to wander a
ghost among the living. Besides, I foresaw, to aggravate the severity of
my fate, that my little pittance would soon melt away. I endeavoured to
obtain needlework; but, not having been taught early, and my hands
being rendered clumsy by hard work, I did not sufficiently excel to
be employed by the ready-made linen shops, when so many women, better
qualified, were suing for it. The want of a character prevented my
getting a place; for, irksome as servitude would have been to me,
I should have made another trial, had it been feasible. Not that I
disliked employment, but the inequality of condition to which I must
have submitted. I had acquired a taste for literature, during the five
years I had lived with a literary man, occasionally conversing with
men of the first abilities of the age; and now to descend to the lowest
vulgarity, was a degree of wretchedness not to be imagined unfelt. I had
not, it is true, tasted the charms of affection, but I had been familiar
with the graces of humanity.