Pamela | Page 7

hard
labour, add, in these your advanced years, to both your days. For, so
happy am I, I can have no grief, no pain, in looking forward, but from
reflecting, that one day we must be separated.

But it is fit that we so comport ourselves as not to embitter our present
happiness with prospects too gloomy--but bring our minds to be
cheerfully thankful for the present, wisely to enjoy that present as we
go along--and at last, when all is to be wound up--lie down, and say,
"_Not mine_, but Thy will be done."
I have written much; yet have still more to say relating to other parts of
your kind acceptable letter; and so will soon write again: for I must
think every opportunity happy, whereby I can assure you, how much I
am, and will ever be, without any addition to my name, if it will make
you easier, your dutiful PAMELA.

LETTER IV
MY DEAREST FATHER AND MOTHER,
I now write again, as I told you I should in my last; but I am half afraid
to look at the copy of it; for your worthy hearts, so visible in your letter
and my beloved's kind deportment upon shewing it to him, raised me
into a frame of mind, bordering on ecstasy: yet I wrote my heart. But
you must not, my dear father, write to your Pamela so affectingly. Your
steadier mind could hardly bear your own moving strain, and you were
forced to lay down your pen, and retire: how then could I, who love
you so dearly, if you had not increased that love by fresh and stronger
instances of your worthiness, forbear being affected, and raised above
myself! But I will not again touch upon this subject.
You must know then, that my dearest spouse commands me, with his
kind respects, to tell you, he has thought of a method to make your
worthy hearts easy; those were his words: "And this is," said he, "by
putting that whole estate, with the new purchase, under your father's
care, as I at first intended: he shall receive and pay, and order every
thing as he pleases: and Longman, who grows in years, shall be eased
of that burden. Your father writes a very legible hand, and shall take
what assistants he pleases; and do you, Pamela, see that this new task
be made as easy and pleasant to him as possible. He shall make up his
accounts only to you, my dear. And there will be several pleasures arise
to me upon it: first, that it will be a relief to honest Longman, who has
business enough on his hands. Next, it will make the good couple easy,
to have an opportunity of enjoying that as their due, which now their
too grateful hearts give them so many causeless scruples about. Thirdly,

it will employ your father's time, more suitably to your liking and mine,
because with more ease to himself; for you see his industrious will
cannot be satisfied without doing something. In the fourth place, the
management of this estate will gain him more respect and reverence
among the tenants and his neighbours: and yet be all in his own way.
For," added he, "you'll see, that it is always one point in view with me,
to endeavour to convince every one, that I esteem and value them for
their own intrinsic merit, and want not any body to distinguish them in
any other light than that in which they have been accustomed to
appear."
So, my dear father, the instrument will be drawn, and brought you by
honest Mr. Longman, who will be with you in a few days to put the last
hand to the new purchase, and to give you possession of your new
commission, if you accept it, as I hope you will; and the rather, for my
dear Mr. B.'s third reason; and knowing that this trust will be
discharged as worthily and as sufficiently, after you are used to it, as if
Mr. Longman himself was in it--and better it cannot be. Mr. Longman
is very fond of this relief, and longs to be down to settle every thing
with you, as to the proper powers, the method, &c. And he says, in his
usual phrase, that he'll make it as easy to you as a glove.
If you do accept it, my dear Mr. B. will leave every thing to you, as to
rent, where not already fixed, and, likewise, as to acts of kindness and
favour to be done where you think proper; and he says, that, with his
bad qualities, he was ever deemed a kind landlord; and that I can
confirm in fifty instances to his honour: "So that the old gentleman,"