Posthumous Works of Mary Wollstonecraft/Volume 3/Letter 34
LETTER XXXIV.
Jan. 30.
From the purport of your last letters, I would suppose that this will scarcely reach you; and I have already written so many letters, that you have either not received, or neglected to acknowledge, I do not find it pleasant, or rather I have no inclination, to go over the same ground again. If you have received them, and are still detained by new projects, it is useless for me to say any more on the subject. I have done with it for ever—yet I ought to remind you that your pecuniary interest suffers by your absence.
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For my part, my head is turned giddy, by only hearing of plans to make money, and my contemptuous feelings have sometimes burst out. I therefore was glad that a violent cold gave me a pretext to stay at home, lest I should have uttered unseasonable truths.
My child is well, and the spring will perhaps restore me to myself.—I have endured many inconveniences this winter, which should I be ashamed to mention, if they had been unavoidable. "The secondary pleasures of life," you say, "are very necessary to my comfort:" it may be so; but I have ever considered them as secondary. If therefore you accuse me of wanting the resolution necessary to bear the common[1] evils of life; I should answer, that I have not fashioned my mind to sustain them, because I would avoid them, cost what it would
Adieu!
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- ↑ This probably alludes to some expression of the person to whom the letters are addressed, in which he treated as common evils, things upon which the letter writer was disposed to bestow a different appellation.
Editor.