Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/255

 a kind of an Occasion, which shall be nameless, and he must marry.

answer both these Ends, and to join the Wise and the Wicked together, he will, in the abundance of his Prudentials, take a Wife that shall be sure to be pass'd Children; so gratifying the Beast and the Christian both at once. Upon this, he singles out a grave motherly Widow, who he took to be about Five and fifty, and indeed, by her Face, she seemed to be no less.

Lady had as much Occasion for a Husband as Mr. B had for a Wife; whether it was upon the same Motive, History is silent in that Part, and so am I; but, it seems, she had been given to understand what Foot it was Mr. B married upon; and not being willing to disappoint him, or rather, not willing to lose him, she call'd her self an old Woman, and her Beauty concurring, admitted what few Widows are pleas'd to stoop to, (viz.) that she was, as above, near Five and fifty.

Being thus happily married, and Mr. B wrapt up in his Enjoyments, lo, to his great disappointment, the Lady proves with Child, and, in the due Course of Time, brings him Twins, a fine Boy and Girl; and after all this, as I say, in the due Course of Time, three more.

unlook'd-for, undesired Fruitfulness, moves him to enquire a little farther; and, searching the Register at the Birth of his Twins, he finds, to his surprize, that truly Fame, and a course Countenance, had wronged his Wife about ten Years, and that, instead of being Five he fifty, she was not much above Four and forty.