Pamela, Or Virtue Rewarded

Let me see: What are the rules I am to observe from this awful lecture?

Why these:

1. That I must not, when he is in great wrath with any body, break in

upon him without his leave. Well, I'll remember it, I warrant. But yet I

think this rule is almost peculiar to himself.

2. That I must think his displeasure the heaviest thing that can befall

me. To be sure I shall.

3. And so that I must not wish to incur it, to save any body else. I'll

be further if I do.

4. That I must never make a compliment to any body at his expense.

5. That I must not be guilty of any acts of wilful meanness. There is

a great deal meant in this; and I'll endeavour to observe it all. To be

sure, the occasion on which he mentions this, explains it; that I must

say nothing, though in anger, that is spiteful or malicious; that is

disrespectful or undutiful, and such-like.

6. That I must bear with him, even when I find him in the wrong. This is

a little hard, as the case may be! I wonder whether poor Miss Sally Godfrey be living or dead!

7. That I must be as flexible as the reed in the fable, lest, by

resisting the tempest, like the oak, I be torn up by the roots. Well,

I'll do the best I can!--There is no great likelihood, I hope, that

I should be too perverse; yet sure, the tempest will not lay me quite

level with the ground, neither.

8. That the education of young people of condition is generally wrong.

Memorandum; That if any part of children's education fall to my lot, I

never indulge and humour them in things that they ought to be restrained

in.

9. That I accustom them to bear disappointments and control.

10. That I suffer them not to be too much indulged in their infancy.

11. Nor at school.

12. Nor spoil them when they come home.

13. For that children generally extend their perverseness from the nurse

to the schoolmaster: from the schoolmaster to the parents:

14. And, in their next step, as a proper punishment for all, make their

ownselves unhappy.

15. That undutiful and perverse children make bad husbands and wives:

And, collaterally, bad masters and mistresses.

16. That, not being subject to be controlled early, they cannot, when

married, bear one another.

17. That the fault lying deep, and in the minds of each other, neither

will mend it.

18. Whence follow misunderstandings, quarrels, appeals, ineffectual

reconciliations, separations, elopements; or, at best, indifference;

perhaps, aversion.--Memorandum; A good image of unhappy wedlock, in the

words YAWNING HUSBAND, and VAPOURISH WIFE, when together: But separate,

both quite alive.