Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/194

188 mighty regard for their relations; We must not eat to-day, for my uncle Tom, or my cousin Betty, died this time ten years: Let's have a ball to-night, it is my neighbour such-a-one's-birthday; She looked upon all this as grimace; yet she constantly observed her husband's birthday, her weddingday, and some few more.

Though she was a truly good woman, and had a sincere motherly love for her son John, yet there wanted not those who endeavoured to create a misunderstanding between them, and they had so far prevailed with him once, that he turned her out of doors, to his great sorrow, as he found afterward, for his affairs went on at sixes and sevens.

She was no less judicious in the turn of her conversation and choice of her studies, in which she far exceeded all her sex: your rakes that hate the company of all sober, grave gentlewomen, would bear hers: and she would, by her handsome manner of proceeding, sooner reclaim them than some that were more sour and reserved: she was a zealous preacher up of chastity, and conjugal fidelity in wives, and by no means a friend to the new-fangled doctrine of the indispensable duty of cuckoldom: though she advanced her opinions with a becoming assurance, yet she never ushered them in, as some positive creatures will do, with dogmatical assertions. This is infallible; I cannot be mistaken; none but a rogue can deny it. It has been observed that such people are oftener in the wrong than any body.

Though she had a thousand good qualities, she was not without her faults; among which, one might per-