Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/175

Rh lovers than one, each of whom is often more jealous than a thousand husbands; and very unlucky rencounters may often happen under the best management. I need not warn you to employ your good offices chiefly in favour of those, whom you find most liberal: yet, if your lady should happen to cast an eye upon a handsome footman, you should be generous enough to bear with her humour, which is no singularity, but a very natural appetite: it is still the safest of all home intrigues, and was formerly the least suspected, until of late years it has grown more common. The great danger is, lest this kind of gentry, dealing too often in bad ware, may happen not to be sound; and then your lady and you are in a very bad way, although not altogether desperate.

But to say the truth, I confess it is a great presumption in me to offer you any instructions in the conduct of your lady's amours, wherein your whole sisterhood is already so expert, and deeply learned; although it be much more difficult to compass, than that assistance which my brother footmen give their masters on the like occasion; and therefore I leave this affair to be treated by some abler pen.

When you lock up a silk mantua, or laced head, in a trunk or chest, leave a piece out, that when you open the trunk again, you may know where to find it.