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 to him if he can but keep himself sober till he goes to bed.

Nor is it less pleasure to hear the discourse at the table after the second course, when a jolly red-nosed toper, a pot companion of the bride’s father, began, saying, Marriage was instituted in a state of innocency, nay, even in Paradise; and that without it the church would want pastors, and the kindom soldiers to defend it.

Nay, farther, that children are blessings from heaven, and therefore barrenness was accounted the greatest scandal in the world among the Jewish women: Aye, and by the English women too, replies a grave old matron, and I should be sorry that my young mistress here (as well for my own sake as her’s) should be under that curse; for I hope ere ten months, to carry her first boy to the fount.

Dinner being over, the parson blesses them; when the midwife comes to the bridegroom, saying, Now, happy man, for a maidenhead; but there is a great discretion to be used in the gathering of it; it must be gently cropped for fear of spoiling; for if you go too boisterously to work you’ll pull it up by the roots; but if you do it just by degrees, it is young and tender, and you’ll find it coming.

We will now suppose the afternoon worn out