but none lived to any age, except myself, who had received from nature a constitution perfectly healthy.
My education, till past fourteen, was no better than very vulgar; reading, or rather spelling, an illegible scrawl, and a little ordinary plain-work, composed the whole system of it: and then all my foundation in virtue was no other than a total ignorance of vice, and the shy timidity general to our sex, in the tender stage of life, when objects alarm, or frighten more by their novelty, than any thing else: but then this is a fear too often cured at the expence of innocence, when Miss, by degrees, begins no longer to look on man as a creature of prey that will eat her.
My poor mother had divided her time so entirely between her scholars, and her little domestic cares, that she had spared very little of it to my instruction, having, from her own innocence from all ill, no hint, or thought of guarding me against any.
