"By Poverty I mean distressed, not narrow Circumstances; and being, with a large dependent Family, in a Situation in Life that you know not how to go out of, and yet are not able to support; and when you pay Cent. per Cent. for every Necessary of Life, by being obliged to buy every thing by retail: when, if you endeavour to keep up a fair Out-side, and paint not your Poverty in the most ghastly Shape, your nominal Friends will call you extravagant; whilst, on the other hand, if you set your Poverty in full View, such Friends will generously think you too low for their Regard; and comfort themselves that you are too impotent to hurt them, even in the Eyes of the World. Then it is but watching over every minute Circumstance of your Life, exaggerating every human Failing, and it will be easily believed, you deserve your Fate, and they do right in abandoning you to it."

-Sarah Fielding, The Adventures of David Simple. Volume the Last