Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/48

 with a suitable Equipage: He made his Addresses to a wealthy Citizen, and Proposals of suitable Settlement, for his Consent to court his Daughter. Nothing appeared but what was fair and honourable; he is accepted; the young Lady, virtuous, modest, beautiful, finely bred, in the Bloom of her Youth, wheedled with his Tongue, and deceived with the appearance of a fine Gentleman, and a Lover, yields to the Proposals, and throws her self into the Arms of the worst of Monsters.

very first Moments of his embraces fright her with something inexpressibly nauseous about him; yet Innocence and Virtue had no Power to make a Judgment of Things; but, like the chast Roman Lady, whose Husband had a stinking Breath, innocently answered, That she thought all Men were so.

short, the Lady is ruined the first Night; the V boasted among his viler Companions, that he had given her something that would soon dispose of her; and it was too true; in less than a Month she was in a Condition not fit to be described, in about two more the ablest Physicians shook their Heads, and voted her Incurable, in eight Months she was a deplorable Object, and, in less than a Year, lodg'd in her Grave; the Murtherer, for he can be no other, putting on Black for a shew; but when charged home by the Friends of the ruin'd Lady, answered with a kind of a laugh, that he thought he had been cured.

this unhappy Story were a Romance, a Fiction, contrived to illustrate the Subject, I should give it you with all its abhorred Particulars, as far as decency of Language would permit; that the abuse of Matrimony, which is the Subject