Status Updates From A Simple Story

Self-censorship, 18C style

“How hard is it to restrain conversation from the subject of our thoughts; and yet amidst our dearest friends, and among persons who have the same dispositions and sentiments as our own, their minds fixed upon the self-same objects, is this constraint practised—and thus society, which was meant for one of our greatest blessings, becomes...

[cont'd]

Sure, the Pater Familias might forbid all contact with you cos your mom cheated on him once (and then died), but he'll still want make sure you're not reading the wrong books...

Every. Single. Time.

...after four years passed in the most perfect enjoyment of happiness, the marriage state could give; after seeing himself the father of a beautiful daughter, whom he loved with a tenderness nearly equal to his love for her mother, Lord Elmwood was then under the indispensable necessity of leaving them both [...] in order to save [...] a very large estate in the West Indies.

"...your conversation keeps the ladies from retiring.”

“Your lordship’s does not,” said Miss Milner, “for you say nothing.”

“Because, madam, I am afraid to offend.”

“But does not your lordship also hope to please? and without
risking the one, it is impossible to arrive at the other.”

"You have run the hazard of being murdered, and what is worse, of being excommunicated..."

Don't know what I was expecting

(something sub-Richardson, perhaps, which, having just barely survived the rigor mortising of Pamela, is already pretty much sub-omnia in my estimation),

but this is really quite good indeed."