No

90. SATURDAY, October 21, 1786.

To the AUTHOR of the LOUNGER.

SIR,

THOUGH, from my rank in life, being a tradefman's daughter, left an orphan at fix years old, I had little title to know any thing about fenfibility or feeling; yet having been very kindly taken into a family, where there were feveral young ladies who were great readers, I had opportunities of hearing a good deal about these things. By the fame young ladies I was made acquainted with your Paper, and it was a favourite employment of mine to read the Lounger to them every Saturday morning. In one of the numbers published fome time ago, we met with Mrs. Alice Heartly's account of an old lady with whom the lives; and from the experience of our own feelings, could not help pitying the connection with one so destitute of all tender fentiments as my Lady Bidmore. I had foon after occafion to congratulate myself on a very different fort of establishment, having been recommended by my young patroneffes to a lady, who ufed frequently to vifit at their house, whom we all knew (indeed it was her pride, fhe used

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to fay, to acknowledge her weakness on that fide) to be a perfect pattern, or, according to her own phrase, a perfect martyr of the most acute and delicate fenfibility. At our house I faw her once in the greatest distress imaginable, from the accidental drowning of a fly in the cream-pot; and got great credit with her myself, for my tenderness about a goldfinch belonging to one of our young ladies, which I had taught to perch upon my shoulder, and pick little crumbs out of my month. I fhall never forget Mrs. Senfitive's crying out, "Oh! how I envy "her the sweet little creature's kiffes !" It made me blush to hear her speak fo; for I had never thought of kiffes in the matter.

That little circumftance, however, procured me her favour fo much, that, on being told of my fituation, she begged I might, as she was kind enough to exprefs it, be placed under her protection. As I had heard fo much of her tender-heartedness and her feeling; as she was very rich, having been left a widow, with the difpofal of her husband's whole fortune; as she had nobody but herself in family, fo that it promised to be an easy place; all these things made me very happy to accept of her offer; and I agreed to go home to her house immediately, her last attendant having left her fomewhat fuddenly. I heard indeed, the very morning after

I went thither, that her fervants did not use to ftay long with her, which gave me fome little uneafinefs; but fhe took occafion to inform me, that it was entirely owing to their cruelty, and want of feeling, having turned them all off for some neglect or ill ufage of her little family, as fhe called it. This little family, of which I had not heard before, confifts of a number of birds and beafts, which it is the great pleasure of Mrs. Senfitive's life to keep and to fondle, and on which' fhe is constantly exercising her fenfibilities, as she says. My chief employment is to affift her in the care of them.

The waiting on this family of Mrs. Senfitive's is not so easy a task as I at first had flattered myfelf it would have been. We have three lapdogs, four cats, fome of the ladies of which are almost always lying-in, a monkey, a flying squirrel, two parrots, a parroquet, a Virginia nightingale, a jack-daw, an owl, befides half a hundred smaller birds, bulfinches, canaries, linnets, and white fparrows. We have a dormouse in a box, a set of guinea-pigs in the garret, and a tame otter in the cellar; befides out-pensioners of pigeons and crows at our windows, and mice that come from a hole in the parlour wainscotting, to vifit us at breakfast and dinner time. All these I am obliged to tend and watch with the utmost care and affiduity; not only to take

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care that their food and their drink be in plenty, and good order; not only to wash the lap-dogs, and to comb the cats, to play on the bird-organ for the instruction of the canaries and goldfinches, and to speak to the parrots and jack-daw for theirs; but I must accommodate myself, as my mistress says, to the feelings of the sweet creatures; I must contribute to their amusement, and keep them in good fpirits; I must scratch the heads of the parrots; I must laugh to the monkey, and play at cork-balls with the kittens. Mrs. Senfitive fays, fhe can understand their looks and their language from Sympathy; and that she is sure it must delight every susceptible mind to have thus an opportunity for extending the fphere of its fenfibilities.

You can

She fometimes takes an opportunity of extending fomething else with poor me. hardly fuppofe what a paffion fhe gets into, if any thing about this family of hers is neglected; and when the chufes to be angry, and speak her mind to me a little loud or fo, her favourites, I fuppofe from fympathy too, join in the remonftrance, and make fuch a concert !-What between the lap-dogs, the parrots, the jack-daw, and the monkey, there is fuch a barking, fqualling, cawing, and chattering! Mrs. Senfitive's ears are not fo easily hurt as her feelings.

But the misfortune is, Mr. Lounger, thu hor feelings are only made for brute creatures, and VOL. III.

K

dout

don't extend to us poor Christians of the family. She has no pity on us, no fympathy in the world for our diftreffes. She keeps a chambermaid and a boy befides myfelf; and I affure you it does not fare near fo well with us as it does with the lap-dogs and the monkey. Nay, I have heard an old milk-woman fay, who has been long about the family, that Mr. Senfitive himfelf was not treated altogether fo kindly as fome of his lady's four-footed favourites. He was, it feems, a good-natured man, and not much given to complain. The old woman fays, fhe never heard of his finding fault with any thing, but once that Mrs. Senfitive infifted on taking into bed a Bologna greyhound, because she said it could not sleep a-nights, from the coldness of the climate in this country. Yet she often talks of her dear, dear Mr. Senfitive, and weeps when fhe talks of him; and fhe has got a fine tombftone raised over his grave, with an epitaph full of difconfolates, and inconfolables, and what not. To fay truth, that is one way even for a human creature to get into her good graces; for I never heard her mention any of her dead friends without a great deal of kindness and tender regrets : but we are none of us willing to purchase her favour at that rate.

As for the living, they have the misfortune never to be to her liking. Ordinary objects of harity we are ordered never to suffer to come

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