Page:Pleasures of matrimony displayed.pdf/10

10 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 fake as hers) should be under that curse; for I hope ere ten months, to carry her first boy to the font.

Dinner being over, the Parson blesses them: then the midwife comes to the bride- groom, saying, Now, happy man, for a maidenhead! But there is great discretion to be used in the gathering of it; it must be gently cropped, for fear of spiling; 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 by dancing, to the great pleasure of the spectators; and the night being begun, the bride is stolen away from the company, and put to bed, and, after her, the bridegroom, now ready to consummate the highest joys of matrimony. But, though the bridegroom now thinks each minute an age till he reaps the longed-for fruit of all his amorus expectations, he is still obliged to wait with patience; for up comes the sack posset,