Page:Oration on the virtues of the old women, and the pride of the young (1).pdf/3

 but to prick and ſew, and fling their feet when the fiddle plays, ſo they become a parcel of yellow-faced female taylors, unequal matches for countrymen, Flanders babies, brought up in a box, and muſt be carried in a baſket, knows nothing but pinching poverty, hunger and pride, can neither milk kye, muck a byre, card, ſpin, nor yet keep a cow from a corn-rig; the moſt of ſuch are as blind penny-worths, as buying pigs in pocks, and ought only to be matched with Tacket-makers, Tree-trimmers, and Male-taylors, that they may be male and female agreeable in trade, ſince their paper-faced fingers are not for hard labours; yet they might alſo paſs on a pinch for a black Sutor's wife, for the ſtitching of white ſeams round the mouth of a lady's ſhoe, or with Barbers or Bakers they might be buckled, becauſe of their muſlin-mouth and pinch-beck ſpeeches, when barm is ſcant they can blow up the bread with fair wind, and when the razor is rough, can trim their chafts with a fair tale, oil their peruke with her white lips, and powder the beaus pow with a French puff; they are well verſed in all the ſcience of flattery, muſical-tunes, horn-pipes, and country dances, tho' perfect in none but the reel of Gammon.

Yet theſe are they the fickle farmer fixes his fancy upon; a bundle of clouts, a ſkeleton of bones, Maggy and the mutch, like twa fir-ſticks and a pickle tow, neither for his plate nor his plow; very unproper pleniſhing, neither for his profit nor has pleaſure, to plout her hands thro' Hawkey's caff-cug is a hateful hardſhip for Manmy's pet, and will hack a' her bands. All this have I ſeen and heard, and been witneſs too, but my pen being a gooſe-quill, cannot expoſe their names nor places of abode, but warns the working men out of their way

Secondly, I ſee another ſort, that can work and maun work till they be married and become miſtreſs themſelves; but as the huſband receives them, the thrift leaves them; before that, they wrought as for a wager, they ſpan as for a premium, buſket as for a brag, ſcour'd their din ſkins as a wauker does worſted blankets, kept as a mim in the mouth as a