Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/148

140 reasonable and agreeable companion. This must produce in your husband a true rational love and esteem for you, which old age will not diminish. He will have a regard for your judgment and opinion in matters of the greatest weight; you will be able to entertain each other without a third person to relieve you by finding discourse. The endowments of your mind will even make your person more agreeable to him; and when you are alone, your time will not lie heavy upon your hands, for want of some trifling amusement.

As little respect as I have for the generality of your sex, it has sometimes moved me with pity to see the lady of the house forced to withdraw immediately after dinner, and this in families where there is not much drinking; as if it were an established maxim, that women are uncapable of all conversation. In a room where both sexes meet, if the men are discoursing upon any general subject, the ladies never think it their business to partake in what passes, but in a separate club entertain each other with the price and choice of lace and silk, and what dresses they liked or disapproved at the church or the playhouse. And when you are among yourselves, how naturally, after the first compliments, do you apply your hands to each others lappets, and ruffles, and mantuas; as if the whole business of your lives, and the publick concern of the world, depended upon the cut or colour of your dress. As divines say, that some people take more pains to be damned, than it would cost them to be saved; so your sex employs more thought, memory, and application to be fools, than would serve to make them wise and useful. When I flect