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Jules Verne - "De la Terre a la Lune"

John Webster - "The Duchess of Malfi"

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New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Moll Flanders

D >> Daniel Defoe >> Moll Flanders




Upon his coming up to them, for they were all still together,
'Sit down, Robin,' says the old lady, 'I must have some talk
with you.' 'With all my heart, madam,' says Robin, looking
very merry. 'I hope it is about a good wife, for I am at a great
loss in that affair.' 'How can that be?' says his mother; 'did
not you say you resolved to have Mrs. Betty?' 'Ay, madam,'
says Robin, 'but there is one has forbid the banns.' 'Forbid,
the banns!' says his mother; 'who can that be?' 'Even Mrs.
Betty herself,' says Robin. 'How so?' says his mother. 'Have
you asked her the question, then?' 'Yes, indeed, madam,' says
Robin. 'I have attacked her in form five times since she was sick,
and am beaten off; the jade is so stout she won't capitulate nor
yield upon any terms, except such as I cannot effectually grant.'
'Explain yourself,' says the mother, 'for I am surprised; I do
not understand you. I hope you are not in earnest.'

'Why, madam,' says he, 'the case is plain enough upon me,
it explains itself; she won't have me, she says; is not that plain
enough? I think 'tis plain, and pretty rough too.' 'Well, but,'
says the mother, 'you talk of conditions that you cannot grant;
what does she want--a settlement? Her jointure ought to be
according to her portion; but what fortune does she bring you?'
'Nay, as to fortune,' says Robin, 'she is rich enough; I am
satisfied in that point; but 'tis I that am not able to come up
to her terms, and she is positive she will not have me without.'

Here the sisters put in. 'Madam,' says the second sister, ''tis
impossible to be serious with him; he will never give a direct
answer to anything; you had better let him alone, and talk no
more of it to him; you know how to dispose of her out of his
way if you thought there was anything in it.' Robin was a little
warmed with his sister's rudeness, but he was even with her,
and yet with good manners too. 'There are two sorts of people,
madam,' says he, turning to his mother, 'that there is no
contending with; that is, a wise body and a fool; 'tis a little
hard I should engage with both of them together.'

The younger sister then put in. 'We must be fools indeed,'
says she, 'in my brother's opinion, that he should think we can
believe he has seriously asked Mrs. Betty to marry him, and
that she has refused him.'

'Answer, and answer not, say Solomon,' replied her brother.
'When your brother had said to your mother that he had asked
her no less than five times, and that it was so, that she positively
denied him, methinks a younger sister need not question the
truth of it when her mother did not.' 'My mother, you see,
did not understand it,' says the second sister. 'There's some
difference,' says Robin, 'between desiring me to explain it,
and telling me she did not believe it.'

'Well, but, son,' says the old lady, 'if you are disposed to let
us into the mystery of it, what were these hard conditions?'
'Yes, madam,' says Robin, 'I had done it before now, if the
teasers here had not worried my by way of interruption. The
conditions are, that I bring my father and you to consent to it,
and without that she protests she will never see me more upon
that head; and to these conditions, as I said, I suppose I shall
never be able to grant. I hope my warm sisters will be
answered now, and blush a little; if not, I have no more to say
till I hear further.'

This answer was surprising to them all, though less to the
mother, because of what I had said to her. As to the daughters,
they stood mute a great while; but the mother said with some
passion, 'Well, I had heard this before, but I could not believe
it; but if it is so, they we have all done Betty wrong, and she
has behaved better than I ever expected.' 'Nay,' says the eldest
sister, 'if it be so, she has acted handsomely indeed.' 'I confess,'
saysthe mother, 'it was none of her fault, if he was fool enough
totake a fancy to her; but to give such an answer to him, shows
more respect to your father and me than I can tell how to
express; I shall value the girl the better for it as long as I know
her.' 'But I shall not,' says Robin, 'unless you will give your
consent.' 'I'll consider of that a while,' says the mother; 'I
assure you, if there were not some other objections in the way,
this conduct of hers would go a great way to bring me to
consent.' 'I wish it would go quite through it,' says Robin;
'if you had a much thought about making me easy as you have
about making me rich, you would soon consent to it.'

'Why, Robin,' says the mother again, 'are you really in earnest?
Would you so fain have her as you pretend?' "Really, madam,'
says Robin, 'I think 'tis hard you should question me upon
that head after all I have said. I won't say that I will have her;
how can I resolve that point, when you see I cannot have her
without your consent? Besides, I am not bound to marry at
all. But this I will say, I am in earnest in, that I will never have
anybody else if I can help it; so you may determine for me.
Betty or nobody is the word, and the question which of the
two shall be in your breast to decide, madam, provided only,
that my good-humoured sisters here may have no vote in it.'

All this was dreadful to me, for the mother began to yield,
and Robin pressed her home on it. On the other hand, she
advised with the eldest son, and he used all the arguments in
the world to persuade her to consent; alleging his brother's
passionate love for me, and my generous regard to the family,
in refusing my own advantages upon such a nice point of
honour, and a thousand such things. And as to the father, he
was a man in a hurry of public affairs and getting money,
seldom at home, thoughtful of the main chance, but left all
those things to his wife.

You may easily believe, that when the plot was thus, as they
thought, broke out, and that every one thought they knew how
things were carried, it was not so difficult or so dangerous for
the elder brother, whom nobody suspected of anything, to have
a freer access to me than before; nay, the mother, which was
just as he wished, proposed it to him to talk with Mrs. Betty.
'For it may be, son,' said she, 'you may see farther into the
thing than I, and see if you think she has been so positive as
Robin says she has been, or no.' This was as well as he could
wish, and he, as it were, yielding to talk with me at his mother's
request, she brought me to him into her own chamber, told me
her son had some business with me at her request, and desired
me to be very sincere with him, and then she left us together,
and he went and shut the door after her.

He came back to me and took me in his arms, and kissed me
very tenderly; but told me he had a long discourse to hold
with me, and it was not come to that crisis, that I should make
myself happy or miserable as long as I lived; that the thing
was now gone so far, that if I could not comply with his desire,
we would both be ruined. Then he told the whole story
between Robin, as he called him, and his mother and sisters
and himself, as it is above. 'And now, dear child,' says he,
'consider what it will be to marry a gentleman of a good family,
in good circumstances, and with the consent of the whole house,
and to enjoy all that he world can give you; and what, on the
other hand, to be sunk into the dark circumstances of a woman
that has lost her reputation; and that though I shall be a private
friend to you while I live, yet as I shall be suspected always,
so you will be afraid to see me, and I shall be afraid to own you.'

He gave me no time to reply, but went on with me thus: 'What
has happened between us, child, so long as we both agree to do
so, may be buried and forgotten. I shall always be your sincere
friend, without any inclination to nearer intimacy, when you
become my sister; and we shall have all the honest part of
conversation without any reproaches between us of having
done amiss. I beg of you to consider it, and to not stand in the
way of your own safety and prosperity; and to satisfy you that
I am sincere,' added he, 'I here offer you #500 in money, to
make you some amends for the freedoms I havetaken with
you, which we shall look upon as some of the folliesof our
lives, which 'tis hoped we may repent of.'

He spoke this in so much more moving terms than it is possible
for me to express, and with so much greater force of argument
than I can repeat, that I only recommend it to those who read
the story, to suppose, that as he held me above an hour and a
half in that discourse, so he answered all my objections, and
fortified his discourse with all the arguments that human wit
and art could devise.

I cannot say, however, that anything he said made impression
enough upon me so as to give me any thought of the matter,
till he told me at last very plainly, that if I refused, he was
sorry to add that he could never go on with me in that station
as we stood before; that though he loved me as well as ever,
and that I was as agreeable to him as ever, yet sense of virtue
had not so far forsaken him as to suffer him to lie with a
woman that his brother courted to make his wife; and if he
took his leave of me, with a denial in this affair, whatever he
might do for me in the point of support, grounded on his first
engagement of maintaining me, yet he would not have me be
surprised that he was obliged to tell me he could not allow
himself to see me any more; and that, indeed, I could not
expect it of him.

I received this last part with some token of surprise and
disorder, and had much ado to avoid sinking down, for indeed
I loved him to an extravagance not easy to imagine; but he
perceived my disorder. He entreated me to consider seriously
of it; assured me that it was the only way to preserve our
mutual affection; that in this station we might love as friends,
with the utmost passion, and with a love of relation untainted,
free from our just reproaches, and free from other people's
suspicions; that he should ever acknowledge his happiness
owing to me; that he would be debtor to me as long as he
lived, and would be paying that debt as long as he had breath.
Thus he wrought me up, in short, to a kind of hesitation in the
matter; having the dangers on one side represented in lively
figures, and indeed, heightened by my imagination of being
turned out to the wide world a mere cast-off whore, for it was
no less, and perhaps exposed as such, with little to provide for
myself, with no friend, no acquaintance in the whole world,
out of that town, and there I could not pretend to stay. All
this terrified me to the last degree, and he took care upon all
occasions to lay it home to me in the worst colours that it could
be possible to be drawn in. On the other hand, he failed not to
set forth the easy, prosperous life which I was going to live.

He answered all that I could object from affection, and from
former engagements, with telling me the necessity that was
before us of taking other measures now; and as to his promises
of marriage, the nature of things, he said, had put an end to
that, by the probability of my being his brother's wife, before
the time to which his promises all referred.

Thus, in a word, I may say, he reasoned me out of my reason;
he conquered all my arguments, and I began to see a danger
that I was in, which I had not considered of before, and that
was, of being dropped by both of them and left alone in the
world to shift for myself.

This, and his persuasion, at length prevailed with me to
consent, though with so much reluctance, that it was easy to
see I should go to church like a bear to the stake. I had some
little apprehensions about me, too, lest my new spouse, who,
by the way, I had not the least affection for, should be skillful
enough to challenge me on another account, upon our first
coming to bed together. But whether he did it with design or
not, I know not, but his elder brother took care to make him
very much fuddled before he went to bed, so that I had the
satisfaction of a drunken bedfellow the first night. How he
did it I know not, but I concluded that he certainly contrived
it, that his brother might be able to make no judgment of the
difference between a maid and a married woman; nor did he
ever entertain any notions of it, or disturb his thoughts about it.

I should go back a little here to where I left off. The elder
brother having thus managed me, his next business was to
manage his mother, and he never left till he had brought her
to acquiesce and be passive in the thing, even without
acquainting the father, other than by post letters; so that she
consented to our marrying privately, and leaving her to mange
the father afterwards.

Then he cajoled with his brother, and persuaded him what
service he had done him, and how he had brought his mother
to consent, which, though true, was not indeed done to serve
him, but to serve himself; but thus diligently did he cheat him,
and had the thanks of a faithful friend for shifting off his whore
into his brother's arms for a wife. So certainly does interest
banish all manner of affection, and so naturally do men give
up honour and justice, humanity, and even Christianity, to
secure themselves.

I must now come back to brother Robin, as we always called
him, who having got his mother's consent, as above, came
big with the news to me, and told me the whole story of it,
with a sincerity so visible, that I must confess it grieved me
that I must be the instrument to abuse so honest a gentleman.
But there was no remedy; he would have me, and I was not
obliged to tell him that I was his brother's whore, though I had
no other way to put him off; so I came gradually into it, to his
satisfaction, and behold we were married.

Modesty forbids me to reveal the secrets of the marriage-bed,
but nothing could have happened more suitable to my
circumstances than that, as above, my husband was so fuddled
when he came to bed, that he could not remember in the
morning whether he had had any conversation with me or no,
and I was obliged to tell him he had, though in reality he had
not, that I might be sure he could make to inquiry about
anything else.

It concerns the story in hand very little to enter into the further
particulars of the family, or of myself, for the five years that I
lived with this husband, only to observe that I had two children
by him, and that at the end of five years he died. He had been
really a very good husband to me, and we lived very agreeably
together; but as he had not received much from them, and had
in the little time he lived acquired no great matters, so my
circumstances were not great, nor was I much mended by the
match. Indeed, I had preserved the elder brother's bonds to
me,to pay #500, which he offered me for my consentto marry
his brother; and this, with what I had saved of the moneyhe
formerly gave me, about as much more by my husband, left me
a widow with about #1200 in my pocket.

My two children were, indeed, taken happily off my hands by
my husband's father and mother, and that, by the way, was all
they got by Mrs. Betty.

I confess I was not suitably affected with the loss of my husband,
nor indeed can I say that I ever loved him as I ought to have
done, or as was proportionable to the good usage I had from
him, for he was a tender, kind, good-humoured man as any
woman could desire; but his brother being so always in my
sight, at least while we were in the country, was a continual
snare to me, and I never was in bed with my husband but I
wished myself in the arms of his brother; and though his brother
never offered me the least kindness that way after our marriage,
but carried it just as a brother out to do, yet it was impossible
for me to do so to him; in short, I committed adultery and incest
with him every day in my desires, which, without doubt, was as
effectually criminal in the nature of the guilt as if I had actually
done it.

Before my husband died his elder brother was married, and
we, being then removed to London, were written to by the old
lady to come and be at the wedding. My husband went, but I
pretended indisposition, and that I could not possibly travel,
so I stayed behind; for, in short, I could not bear the sight of
his being given to another woman, though I knew I was never
to have him myself.

I was now, as above, left loose to the world, and being still
young and handsome, as everybody said of me, and I assure
you I thought myself so, and with a tolerable fortune in my
pocket, I put no small value upon myself. I was courted by
several very considerable tradesmen, and particularly very
warmly by one, a linen-draper, at whose house, after my
husband's death, I took a lodging, his sister being my acquaintance.
Here I had all the liberty and all the opportunity to be gay and
appear in company that I could desire, my landlord's sister
being one of the maddest, gayest things alive, and not so much
mistress of her virtue as I thought as first she had been. She
brought me into a world of wild company, and even brought
home several persons, such as she liked well enough to gratify,
to see her pretty widow, so she was pleased to call me, and
that name I got in a little time in public. Now, as fame and
fools make an assembly, I was here wonderfully caressed, had
abundance of admirers, and such as called themselves lovers;
but I found not one fair proposal among them all. As for their
common design, that I understood too well to be drawn into
any more snares of that kind. The case was altered with me:
I had money in my pocket, and had nothing to say to them. I
had been tricked once by that cheat called love, but the game
was over; I was resolved now to be married or nothing, and
to be well married or not at all.

I loved the company, indeed, of men of mirth and wit, men of
gallantry and figure, and was often entertained with such, as
I was also with others; but I found by just observation, that the
brightest men came upon the dullest errand--that is to say, the
dullest as to what I aimed at. On the other hand, those who
came with the best proposals were the dullest and most
disagreeable part of the world. I was not averse to a tradesman,
but then I would have a tradesman, forsooth, that was
something of a gentleman too; that when my husband had a
mind to carry me to the court, or to the play, he might become
a sword, and look as like a gentleman as another man; and not
be one that had the mark of his apron-strings upon his coat,
or the mark of his hat upon his periwig; that should look as if
he was set on to his sword, when his sword was put on to him,
and that carried his trade in his countenance.

Well, at last I found this amphibious creature, this land-water
thing called a gentleman-tradesman; and as a just plague upon
my folly, I was catched in the very snare which, as I might say,
I laid for myself. I said for myself, for I was not trepanned,
I confess, but I betrayed myself.

This was a draper, too, for though my comrade would have
brought me to a bargain with her brother, yet when it came to
the point, it was, it seems, for a mistress, not a wife; and I kept
true to this notion, that a woman should never be kept for a
mistress that had money to keep herself.

Thus my pride, not my principle, my money, not my virtue,
kept me honest; though, as it proved, I found I had much better
have been sold by my she-comrade to her brother, than have
sold myself as I did to a tradesman that was rake, gentleman,
shopkeeper, and beggar, all together.

But I was hurried on (by my fancy to a gentleman) to ruin
myself in the grossest manner that every woman did; for my
new husband coming to a lump of money at once, fell into
such a profusion of expense, that all I had, and all he had
before, if he had anything worth mentioning, would not have
held it out above one year.

He was very fond of me for about a quarter of a year, and
what I got by that was, that I had the pleasure of seeing a great
deal of my money spent upon myself, and, as I may say, had
some of the spending it too. 'Come, my dear,' says he to me
one day, 'shall we go and take a turn into the country for about
a week?' 'Ay, my dear,' says I, 'whither would you go?' 'I
care not whither,' says he, 'but I have a mind to look like
quality for a week. We'll go to Oxford,' says he. 'How,' says
I, 'shall we go? I am no horsewoman, and 'tis too far for a coach.'
'Too far!' says he; 'no place is too far for a coach-and-six. If
I carry you out, you shall travel like a duchess.' 'Hum,' says
I, 'my dear, 'tis a frolic; but if you have a mind to it, I don't
care.' Well, the time was appointed, we had a rich coach, very
good horses, a coachman, postillion, and two footmen in very
good liveries; a gentleman on horseback, and a page with a
feather in his hat upon another horse. The servants all called
him my lord, and the inn-keepers, you may be sure, did the like,
and I was her honour the Countess, and thus we traveled to
Oxford, and a very pleasant journey we had; for, give him his
due, not a beggar alive knew better how to be a lord than my
husband. We saw all the rarities at Oxford, talked with two or
three Fellows of colleges about putting out a young nephew,
that was left to his lordship's care, to the University, and of
their being his tutors. We diverted ourselves with bantering
several other poor scholars, with hopes of being at least his
lordship's chaplains and putting on a scarf; and thus having
lived like quality indeed, as to expense, we went away for
Northampton, and, in a word, in about twelve days' ramble
came home again, to the tune of about #93 expense.

Vanity is the perfection of a fop. My husband had this
excellence, that he valued nothing of expense; and as his
history, you may be sure, has very little weight in it, 'tis
enough to tell you that in about two years and a quarter he
broke, and was not so happy to get over into the Mint, but got
into a sponging-house, being arrested in an action too heavy
from him to give bail to, so he sent for me to come to him.

It was no surprise to me, for I had foreseen some time that
all was going to wreck, and had been taking care to reserve
something if I could, though it was not much, for myself. But
when he sent for me, he behaved much better than I expected,
and told me plainly he had played the fool, and suffered
himself to be surprised, which he might have prevented; that
now he foresaw he could not stand it, and therefore he would
have me go home, and in the night take away everything I had
in the house of any value, and secure it; and after that, he told
me that if I could get away one hundred or two hundred pounds
in goods out of the shop, I should do it; 'only,' say she, 'let me
know nothing of it, neither what you take nor whither you
carry it; for as for me,' says he, 'I am resolved toget out of
this house and be gone; and if you never hear of me more, my
dear,' says he, 'I wish you well; I am only sorry for the injury
I have done you.' He said some very hand somethings to me
indeed at parting; for I told you he was a gentleman, and that
was all the benefit I had of his being so; that he used me very
handsomely and with good manners upon all occasions, even
to the last, only spent all I had, and left me to rob the creditors
for something to subsist on.

However, I did as he bade me, that you may be sure; and
having thus taken my leave of him, I never saw him more, for
he found means to break out of the bailiff's house that night
or the next, and go over into France, and for the rest of the
creditors scrambled for it as well as they could. How, I knew
not, for I could come at no knowledge of anything, more than
this, that he came home about three o'clock in the morning,
caused the rest of his goods to be removed into the Mint, and
the shop to be shut up; and having raised what money he could
get together, he got over, as I said, to France, from whence I
had one or two letters from him, and no more. I did not see him
when he came home, for he having given me such instructions
as above, and I having made the best of my time, I had no more
business back again at the house, not knowing but I might have
been stopped there by the creditors; for a commission of
bankrupt being soon after issued, they might have stopped me
by orders from the commissioners. But my husband, having
so dexterously got out of the bailiff's house by letting himself
down in a most desperate manner from almost the top of the
house to the top of another building, and leaping from thence,
which was almost two storeys, and which was enough indeed
to have broken his neck, he came home and got away his goods
before the creditors could come to seize; that is to say, before
they could get out the commission, and be ready to send their
officers to take possession.

My husband was so civil to me, for still I say he was much
of a gentleman, that in the first letter he wrote me from France,
he let me know where he had pawned twenty pieces of fine
holland for #30, which were really worth #90, and enclosed
me the token and an order for the taking them up, paying the
money, which I did, and made in time above #100 of them,
having leisure to cut them and sell them, some and some, to
private families, as opportunity offered.

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