words

I wish either my father or my
mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty
both equally bound to it, had minded what they were
about when they begot me; had they duly considered how
much depended upon what they were then doing;—
that not only the production of a rational Being was
concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation
and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the
very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to
the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might
take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all
this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am
verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure
in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to
see me.
Laurence