Page:Pleasures of matrimony (4).pdf/17

 clean, have a reputation among the neighbours. There's such a one's house looks like a paradise says one.—It would do one's heart good to look at it, cries another. And all will grant it is the most provident way for a man to spend but little abroad, and keep the better house, at home; and if so, he may well permit his wife to entertain her friends now and then without prejudice to her husband's estate; for a glass of wine tastes as well at home as abroad; and a capon may be cheaper dressed in his own kitchen then at a French ordinary. And, as for women wearing fine clothes; which some object against, I say it is for the honour of the nation in general, and must be a particular pleasure to the husband to see his wife as fine as her neighbours.

But there is another pleasure attends upon matrimony, and that is, it he has married a wife who has got a relation in the country, and it is ten to one but she has, for women do not rise out of the earth like pompions, but their pedigree has somewhere or other a beginning. If the woman has not, perhaps the man has. And whether their relations be by the