Upon this foundation this book is recommended to the reader as a work
from every part of which something may be learned, and some just and
religious inference is drawn, by which the reader will have something
of instruction, if he pleases to make use of it.
All the exploits of this lady of fame, in her depredations upon
mankind, stand as so many warnings to honest people to beware of them,
intimating to them by what methods innocent people are drawn in,
plundered and robbed, and by consequence how to avoid them. Her
robbing a little innocent child, dressed fine by the vanity of the
mother, to go to the dancing-school, is a good memento to such people
hereafter, as is likewise her picking the gold watch from the young
lady's side in the Park.
Her getting a parcel from a hare-brained wench at the coaches in St.
John Street; her booty made at the fire, and again at Harwich, all give
us excellent warnings in such cases to be more present to ourselves in
sudden surprises of every sort.
Her application to a sober life and industrious management at last in
Virginia, with her transported spouse, is a story fruitful of
instruction to all the unfortunate creatures who are obliged to seek
their re-establishment abroad, whether by the misery of transportation
or other disaster; letting them know that diligence and application
have their due encouragement, even in the remotest parts of the world,
and that no case can be so low, so despicable, or so empty of prospect,
but that an unwearied industry will go a great way to deliver us from
it, will in time raise the meanest creature to appear again the world,
and give him a new case for his life.
There are a few of the serious inferences which we are led by the hand
to in this book, and these are fully sufficient to justify any man in
recommending it to the world, and much more to justify the publication
of it.
There are two of the most beautiful parts still behind, which this
story gives some idea of, and lets us into the parts of them, but they
are either of them too long to be brought into the same volume, and
indeed are, as I may call them, whole volumes of themselves, viz.: 1.
The life of her governess, as she calls her, who had run through, it
seems, in a few years, all the eminent degrees of a gentlewoman, a
whore, and a bawd; a midwife and a midwife-keeper, as they are called;
a pawnbroker, a childtaker, a receiver of thieves, and of thieves'
purchase, that is to say, of stolen goods; and in a word, herself a
thief, a breeder up of thieves and the like, and yet at last a penitent.