Page:Pleasures of matrimony (5).pdf/11

 By this time dinner is upon the table, and marshalled with as much formality as a Lord Mayor’s feast. After the parson says grace, they fall to it without farther ceremony; and here comes a new pleasure to the bridegroom to see all the guests address their glasses to the bride, and afterwards to him. And it will be a pleasure extraordinary 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 innocence, nay, even in Paradise; and that without it the church would want pastors, and the kingdom soldiers to defend it.— Nay, farther, that children are blessings from heaven, & 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 shall be sorry that my young mistress here (as well for my own sake as hers) should be under that curse; for I hope 'ere ten months, to carry her first boy to the font.