Please don't for one moment get the idea that there was anything profitable to a young girl in the novels of the latter eighteenth century. Perhaps you have in mind such dreary sterling works as "Pamela," "Clarissa Harlow," "Sir Charles Grandison," and others that were crammed into your miserably protesting brain in the Literature Courses. Those were the rare--the very rare--exceptions to a large and lurid list, which included such choice classics as "Moll Flanders," "Roxana"--both of them by the same Defoe who wrote "Robinson Crusoe," and whose other novels would send a present-day publisher to States prison--"Peregrine Pickle," "Fanny Hill," "The Delicate Distress," "Roderick Random," and the rest of a rank-flavored multitude.
Emma reveled in the joys of the local "circulating library," too; one of those places that loaned books of a sort to cause even the kindly Sheridan to thunder his famous dictum:
"A circulating library in a town is an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge. It blossoms through the year. And, depend on't, they who are so fond of handling the leaves will long for the fruit at last."
Much reading filled Emma with wonderful new ideas of life. Incidentally, it made her neglect her work, and she was discharged. Her next step was to become barmaid in a tavern. While she was there, a young admirer of hers was seized by the navy press gang. Emma went to the captain of the ship to beg for her swain's release. The captain was John Willett Payn, afterward a rear admiral. Payne granted the lovely girl's plea. He not only gave her what she asked, but his own admiration as well. Her story as a heart winner had begun.
In fiction, the gallant captain would soon have tired of his lively sweetheart and cast her aside. But Emma was not a lowly sweetheart. She was a super-woman. She showed how much stranger than fiction truth may be by deserting Payne for a richer man. First, however, she had wheedled the captain into hiring tutors and music masters for her, and she profited vastly by their teachings.
Her new flame was a sporting baronet, Sir Harry Featherstonhaugh, of Up Park, Sussex. Sir Harry was an all-round athlete and a reckless horseman. He taught Emma to ride--"a beggar on horseback?"--and she became the most daring equestrienne of the century. He taught her to spend money, too. And so splendidly did she learn her lesson that inside of a year Sir Harry was bankrupt.