Chapter 37
letter thirty-seven miss howe to miss arabella harlowe saturday july twenty-second it may be the misfortune of some people to engage everybody's notice others may be the happier though they may be the happier though they may be the more envious, for nobody is thinking them worthy of any. But one would be glad people had the sense to be thankful for that want of consequence, which subject them not to hazards they would heartily have been able to manage under. I own to you that had it not been for the prudent advice of that admirable somebody, whose principal fault is the superiority of her talents, and whose
misfortune to be brothered and sistered by a couple of creatures who are not able to comprehend her excellencies, I might at one time have been plunged into difficulties, but pert, as the superlatively pert may think me, I thought not myself wiser, because I was older, nor for that poor reason qualified to prescribe to, much less to maltreat, a genius so superior. I repeat it with gratitude, that the dear creature's advice was a very great service to me, and this before
my mother's watchfulness became necessary. But how it would have fared with me, I cannot say, had I had a brother or sister who had deemed it their interest as well as the gratification of your sordid envy to misrepresent me. Your admirable sister, in effect, saved you, miss, as well as me, with this difference, you against your will, me with mine, and but for your own brother and his own sister, would not have been lost herself. Would to heaven both sisters had been obliged
with their own wills! The most admirable of her sex would never then have been out of her father's house. You, miss, I don't know what had become of you, but let what would have happened, you would have met with the humanity you have not shown, whether you had deserved it or not, nor at the worst lost either a kind sister or a pitying friend in the most excellent of sisters. But why run I into length to such a poor thing?
Why push I so weak an adversary, whose first letter is all low malice, and whose next is made up of falsehood and inconsistence, as well as spite and ill manners? Yet I was willing to give you a part of my mind. Call for more of it. It shall be at your service.
from one who though she thanks god she is not your sister is not your enemy but that she is not the latter is withheld but by two considerations one that you bear though unworthily a relation to a sister so excellent the other that you are not of consequence enough to engage anything but the pity and contempt of a h
