I see the whole town every Sunday, and select a few that I retain to supper.

In short, if life could be always what it is, I believe I have so much humility in my temper I could be contented without anything better than this two or three hundred years but, alas! 'Dulness, and wrinkles, and disease, must come, And age, and death's irrevocable doom.'" Lady Mary, who had some two-score years still to live, began at this time to deplore her increasing age.

"For my own part," she wrote to Lady Mar, "I have some coteries where wit and pleasure reign, and I should not fail to amuse myself tolerably enough, but for the d----d d----d quality of growing older every day, and my present joys are made imperfect by fears of the future." However, this depression was not always on her, and later she was writing: "I think this is the first time in my life that a letter of yours has lain by me two posts unanswered.

You'll wonder to hear that short silence is occasioned by not having a moment unemployed at Twickenham; but I pass many hours on horseback, and, I'll assure you, ride stag-hunting, which I know you'll stare to hear of.

I have arrived to vast courage and skill that way, and am as well pleased with it as with the acquisition of a new sense: his Royal Highness [the Prince of Wales] hunts in Richmond Park, and I make one of the _beau monde_ in his train.
I desire you after this account not to name the word old woman to me any more: I approach to fifteen nearer than I did ten years ago, and am in hopes to improve every year in health and vivacity." Lady Mary's tongue made her many enemies in society, and when her tongue failed her she brought her pen into action.