g you, that there dwells near the
Royal Exchange as happy a couple as ever entered into wedlock. These
live in that mutual confidence of each other, which renders the
satisfactions of marriage even greater than those of friendship, and
makes wife and husband the dearest appellations of human life. Mr.
Ballance is a merchant of good consideration, and understands the world
not from speculation, but practice. His wife is the daughter of an
honest house, ever bred in a family-way; and has, from a natural good
understanding, and great innocence, a freedom which men of sense know to
be the certain sign of virtue, and fools take to be an encouragement to
vice.

Tom Varnish, a young gentleman of the Middle Temple, by the bounty of a
good father who was so obliging as to die, and leave him in his
twenty-fourth year, besides a good estate, a large sum, which lay in the
hands of Mr. Ballance, had by this means an intimacy at his house; and
being one of those hard students who read plays for improvement in the
law, took his rules of life from thence. Upon mature deliberation, he
conceived it very proper, that he, as a man of wit and pleasure of the
town, should have an intrigue with his merchant's wife. He no sooner
thought of this adventure, but he began it by an amorous epistle to the
lady, and a faithful promise to wait upon her, at a certain hour the
next evening, when he knew her husband was to be absent.

The letter was no sooner received, but it was communicated to the
husband, and produced no other effect in him, than that he joined with
his wife to raise all the mirth they could out of this fantastical piece
of gallantry. They were so little concerned at this dangerous man of
mode, that they plotted ways to perplex him without hurting him. Varnish
comes exactly at his hour; and the lady's well-acted confusion at his
entrance, gave him opportunity to repeat some couplets very fit for the
occasion with very much grace and spirit. His theatrical manner of
making love was interrupted by an alarm of the husband's coming; and the
wife, in a personated terror, beseeched him, if he had any value for the
honour of a woman that loved him, he would jump out of the window. He
did so, and fell upon feather-beds placed on purpose to receive him.

It is not to be conceived how great the joy of an amorous man is when he
has suffered for his mistress, and is never the worse for it. Varnish
the next day writ a most elegant billet, wherei