Page:Pleasures of matrimony (3).pdf/3

 And yet even those who complain the most against matrimony will allow that there are fifteen comforts in it, and if so, though there were no more, which yet I will not grant, who, that is not a madman, would not marry to enjoy fifteen such comforts, as all the world cannot afford him besides? But what will such men say to wooing? I own, indeed, it is not matrimony itself, but it is the highway to it, and he that marries without it looses one of the chiefest pleasures that belong to it. So that in order to treat of the pleasures of Matrimony, I find it necessary to begin with Wooing.

Wooing consists in a man’s pitching upon some object of his affections of the female sex; and it is a comfort, there are more maids than mankind, that he is not confined in his choice; for if one will not another will. Well, having fixed upon the desired she, and found out her habitation, with what her fortune is, he next equips himself as fine as the tailor and sempstress can make him, and prepares for his address; and it is a pleasure to him to be thus rigged, to win his fair mistress. Now, whether the girls have father or mother, uncle or aunt, there’s none but will admit him to pay a visit to his mistress, when he comes in the way of matrimony.

But now what a pleasure it is to be admitted