We shall now leave the honest old pair praying for their dear Pamela, and
return to the account she herself gives of all this; having written it
journal-wise, to amuse and employ her time, in hopes some opportunity
might offer to send it to her friends; and, as was her constant view,
that she might afterwards thankfully look back upon the dangers she had
escaped, when they should be happily overblown, as in time she hoped they
would be; and that then she might examine, and either approve or repent
of her own conduct in them.



LETTER XXXII


O MY DEAREST FATHER AND MOTHER!

Let me write, and bewail my miserable hard fate, though I have no hope
how what I write can be conveyed to your hands!--I have now nothing to
do, but write and weep, and fear and pray! But yet what can I hope for,
when I seem to be devoted, as a victim to the will of a wicked violator
of all the laws of God and man!--But, gracious Heaven, forgive me my
rashness and despondency! O let me not sin against thee; for thou best
knowest what is fittest for thy poor handmaid!--And as thou sufferest not
thy poor creatures to be tempted above what they can bear, I will resign
myself to thy good pleasure: And still, I hope, desperate as my condition
seems, that as these trials are not of my own seeking, nor the effects of
my presumption and vanity, I shall be enabled to overcome them, and, in
God's own good time, be delivered from them.