Page:Janet Clinker's oration, on the villanies of the old women, and the pride of the young.pdf/6

6 muslins and means than good manners; though sack can hold their silver, six houses and a ha cannot contain their ambitious desires. Fortunatus' wonderful purse would fail in fetching in the fourth part of their worldly wants, and the children imitate their mothers, chattering like hungry cranes, crying still, 'I want, I want', ever crying, wilfully wasting, till all be brought to a doleful dish of desolation, and with cleanness of teeth a full breast, an empty belly, big pockets without pence, pinching penury, perfect poverty, drout hunger, want of money and friends both, old age, dim eyes, feeble joints, without shoes or clothes the real fruits of a bad marriage, which bring thoughtless fops to both faith and repentence one day.

3. Another thing I see, hear, and cannot hold is the breeding of bairns, and bringing them up like bull-stirks; they gi'e them waulth of meat, but no manners; but when I was a bairn, if I did not bend obedience, I ken mysel what I got, which learned me what to gie mine; if they had tell me, tuts, or prase no, I laid them o'er my knee and I cam crack for crack o'er their hurdies, like a knock bleaching a barn-web, till the red waur stood on their hips; this brought obedience in my house, and banished dods and ill-nature out the door: I dang the diel out of them, an dadded them like a wet dish-clout, till they did my bidding: but now the bairns are brought to spit fire in their mither's face, and cast dirt on their auld daddies. How can they be good, who never saw a sample of it; or reverence old age who practised no precepts in their youth? How can they love their parents, who gave them black