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198 about money matters, discussion as to what the bridegroom elect was bound to supply, the unscrupulous dropping of one proposal after another with the barest motives of interest. Here is the triumphant announcement of an engagement: "Sister Pegg is suddenly to be married to Mr. Elwes, of Northamtonshire; his estate is knowne to the world to be at the least £2,000 a year. He makes her of his owne offer £500 a year good security Joynter"; but a few weeks later follows a lamentable account of this commercial union: "Poor peg has married a very humersome cros boy has ever I see in my life, and she is very much altered for the worse since she was married; I do not blame her, because sometimes he maks her cry night and day."

Large families gave the mother of the period ample occupation; the infant mortality was tremendous, and, if over half the children survived babyhood, the mother was considered a remarkable manager. We hear of a healthy baby of a month old overlaid by his nurse, of another "seven weeks languishing, breeding teeth and ending in a dropsy," of another dying after six fits of a "quartan ague," suffocated by the