Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/154

138 honourable or equal matches—it is of the fraudulent, or ill-begotten only, of which we shall here speak.

Public-house attendants are most to be guarded against; for they find you mellowed with the fumes of liquor, to which they administer, by themost scrupulous attention to your least wishes; and having dressed for that purpose, throw out their lures and fascinations, when the heart is least capable of resistance. Most of them will condescend to grant the last favour, if you are base enough to talk about marriage; mention the word love, and you may take almost any personal liberties; for the mistress and master enjoin her, as she values her situation, not to be too skittish with good customers, nor too forward with any; thus judgematically dealing out that which will "do good to the house."

These, as well as servant maidens in general, (especially at lodging-houses) fix upon inexperienced young men, of whom the conquest seems easy. Old harridans who are up to the ways of life, after a dozen disappointments, dress out lamb fashion, wear false curls, and paint a little, nicely; subtract eight or ten years from their age (nominally,) and thus entrap into marriage boys of twenty, one or two, whose earnings or