Page:The Adventures of David Simple (1904).djvu/158

 impossible they should know, is a perfect sign of folly. Congreve seems to me to have known them the best of any one: my Lady Wish-for't at her toilette is a perfect picture of them, where she insults over, and thinks herself witty on a poor ignorant wench, because she does not know what she has never been taught or used to. That fine ridicule of the brass thimble and the nutmeg jingling in her pocket, with the hands dangling like bobbins, is exactly their sort of wit; and then they never call any one by their right names; creatures, animals, tilings, all the words of contempt they can think of, are what they delight in. Shakespeare has made Hamlet give the best description imaginable of them in that one line which he addresses to Ophelia; 'Ye lisp, and ye amble, and ye nickname God's creatures.' An expression I never understood, til I knew the world enough to have met with some of these sort of women. They are not confined to any station; for I have known, while the lady has been insulting her waiting-woman in the dressing-room, the chamber-maid has been playing just the same part below-stairs, with the person she thought her inferior, only with a small variation of terms. But I will dwell no longer on them; for I am tired of them, as I have often been in life. "But this would have had no effect on me, had my lady behaved well herself. To her usage was owing all my misery; for by that time I had remained with her two or three months, she began to treat me as a creature born to be her slave: whenever I spoke, I was sure to offend her; if I was silent, I was out of humour; if I said anything in the softest terms, to complain of the alteration of her affection, I was whimsical and ungrateful. I think it impossible to be in a worse situation. She had raised my love by the obligations she had conferred on me, and yet continually provoked my rage, by her ill-nature; I