Letter to the Editress

Miss Porden

Madam,

Your coadjutor in office has proved himself so completely unworthy of my attention that I am under the necessity of giving you the trouble to procure my permission to resign my office of Prose Writer. It is true that the Editor has given me his dismissal but as I held that honor not of him but of the Society, it is their permission which I must obtain and which I shall be much obliged if you will solicit for me. I expect indeed that the able manner in which I have discharged the important duties of my situation will render them very unwilling to accept my resignation, but they must allow that the very treatment which has been the only reward of my services renders it impossible for me to continue in it with honor. To you madam who as a female must be a great admirer of masculine courage the editor’s cowardly refusal of my challenge will appear in its proper light and I have no doubt but your feeling and susceptible heart has felt for my miseries. Indeed, I cannot help lamenting that a lady of your escalated merits, correct taste, and exquisite sensibility should be made the official partner of one whose conduct must so often give you unavailing pain. With regard to the slanders upon me personally in the last Chest, from the rest of his conduct it is easy for me to discover whose malice has dictated them, and they are therefore beneath my anger. As for the clumsy invention of the shopman that is too bungling a snare to deceive anyone and more especially as the pert prig who I saw behind the counter at Birchall’s did not seem to have a head competent to the writing anything beyond an order for music or the multiplication table tho’ indeed very little more was requisite for the author of that letter.

I am, madam, with all due respect
your most obedient servant

P.S. In one thing the pretended shopman was right — The advertising lady is as ugly as sin.