Page:Janet Clinker's oration, on the villanies of the old women, and the pride of the young.pdf/5

5 he trimming of their rigging, tho' their hulls be everlasting in a leaking condition; their backs and their bellies are boxed about with the fins of a big fish, six petticoats, a gown and apron, besides a side sark down to the ankle bones!—Ah! what monstrous rags are here! what a cloth is consumed for covering one pair of buttocks! I leave it to the judgment of any ten tailors in town, if thirty pair of men's breeches may not be cut from a little above the easing of Bessy's bum; and this makes her a motherly woman, as stately a woman as ever trade to market or mill. But when she's married, she turns a madam: her mistress did not work much, and why should she? Her mother ay said that she wad be a lady, but could never tell where her hands lay: but when money is all spent, credit broken, and conduct out of keeping, a wheen babling bubly bairns crying piece, minny, porritch, minny, the witless wanton waster is at her wit's end. Work now or want, and do not say that the world has waur'd you; but lofty noddle, your giddy-headed mother, has led you astray, by learning you to be a lady, before you was fit to be a servant lass, by teaching you laziness instead of hard labour; by giving you such a high conceit of yourself, that nobody thinks anything of you now, and you may judge yourself to be one of those that wise people call little-worth. But after all we have said, when you begin the warld in, be perfectly rich, before you be gentle; work hard for what you gain, and you'll ken better how to guide it, for pride is an imperfect fortune, and a ludicrous life will not last long.

Another sort I see, who has got more silver than sense, more gold than good nature, more