Read "Clarissa Harlowe" by Samuel Richardson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
But what a pretty scheme of life hast thou drawn out for thyself and thy old widow! By my soul, Jack, I was mightily taken with it. There is but one thing wanting in it; and that will come of course: only to be in the commission, and one of the quorum. Thou art already provided with a clerk, as good as thou'lt want, in the widow Lovick; for thou understandest law, and she conscience: a good Lord Chancellor between ye! -- I should take prodigious pleasure to hear thee decide in a bastard case, upon thy new notions and old remembrances.
But raillery apart. (All gloom at heart, by Jupiter! although the pen and the countenance assume airs of levity! ) If, after all, thou canst so easily repent and reform, as thou thinkest thou canst: if thou canst thus shake off thy old sins, and thy old habits: and if thy old master will so readily dismiss so tried and so faithful a servant, and permit thee thus calmly to enjoy thy new system; no room for scandal; all temptation ceasing: and if at last (thy reformation warranted and approved by time) thou marriest, and livest honest: -- why, Belford, I cannot but say, that if all these if's come to pass, thou standest a good chance to be a happy man!