s were made for
leaping of ditches, and clambering over stiles? or
that my parents, wisely foreseeing my future
happiness in country pleasures, had early instructed
me in rural accomplishments of drinking fat ale,
playing at whisk, and smoking tobacco with my
husband? or of spreading of plasters, brewing of
diet-drinks, and stilling rosemary-water, with the
good old gentlewoman my mother-in-law? {40}

_Dor_. I'm sorry, madam, that it is not more in our
power to divert you; I could wish, indeed, that our
entertainments were a little more polite, or your
taste a little less refined. But, pray, madam, how
came the poets and philosophers, that laboured so
much in hunting after pleasure, to place it at last in
a country life? {47}

_Mrs. Sul_. Because they wanted money, child, to find
out the pleasures of the town. Did you ever see a
poet or philosopher worth ten thousand pounds?
if you can show me such a man, I 'll lay you fifty
pounds you'll find him somewhere within the
weekly bills. Not that I disapprove rural pleasures,
as the poets have painted them; in their landscape,
every Phillis has her Corydon, every murmuring
stream, and every flowery mead, gives fresh alarms
to love. Besides, you'll find, that their couples
were never married:--but yonder I see my Corydon,
and a sweet swain it is, Heaven knows!
Come, Dorinda, don't be angry, he's my husband,
and your brother; and, between both, is he not a
sad brute? {62}

_Dor_. I have nothing to say to your part of him, you 're
the best judge.

_Mrs. Sul_. O sister, sister! if ever you marry, beware of
a sullen, silent sot, one that's always musing, but
never thinks. There's some diversion in a talking
blockhead; and since a woman must wear chains,
I would have the pleasure of hearing 'em rattle a
little. Now you shall see, but take this by the way.
He came home this morning at his usual hour of
four, wakened me out of a sweet dream of something
else, by tumbling over the tea-table, which he
broke all to pieces; after his man and he had
rolled about the room, like sick passengers in a
storm, he comes flounce into bed, dead as a salmon
into a fishmonger's basket; his feet cold as ice, his
breath hot as a furnace, and his hands and his face
as greasy as his flannel night-cap. O matrimony!
He tosses up the clothes with a barbarous swing
over his shoulders, disorders