the best profit of it;
to the end, that your Successors, when time shall serve, may find that
they have had frugall Parents; and so walk in your footsteps. Verily
this is one of the necessariest meditations in the World. If we could
but any waies make the dead sensible of it in their grave, undoubtedly
the Reliques of your Parents would rejoice at so happy and carefull an
intention of you their children.

And truly, what is there, among other cogitations, more pleasurable,
then to begin with a handsom Shop-keeping? For this through the daily
gain, yeelds every day new pleasures, and by consequence a merry life.
'Tis true, Merchandize bears a greater respect, and yeelds also
sometimes great gains; but with these trouble somtimes, it is for the
most part subject to great and weighty losses, which is the
destruction of young people, and so intangles the merriest part of
their lives, that fears and cares deprives them of their night rest.
If the wind blow hard, they are presently in a fear that the Ships at
sea laden with their Goods and Wares may be Shipwrack'd. If they will
assure them, then the Assurer goes away with the profit: and they are
also so greedy and cunning, that the least storm or bad tiding makes
them very slow and circumspect; or if they be not so, it is to be
feared, so there happen many losses, that then the Assurer himself
might come to be lost.

But the handsom Shop-keeping is the surest and pleasurablest; for
every moment you get new customers as well from abroad as at home, who
buy continually with ready mony; or otherwise pay the old score, and
trust the new. Yea all the news that goes about the City, is brought
home and imparted to you. There's not a man dies, or woman brought to
bed, but you have knowledge of it. Well then, what greater pleasure
can there be then this?

Also, young Woman, you may, through love and care, herein be assistant
to your husband oftentimes, which you cannot do in Merchandize, and so
by degrees learn to understand the Shop, and converse neatly with the
customers; whereby you can in his absence, also help the customers,
and give them pleasing answers, insomuch that you oftentimes attain to
as perfect a knowledge of the Trading, as your husband himself.

You are happy, yea ten times over happy, O housewively young Woman in
this choice, and that not only for your husband, but principally for
your self. For if that mischance might happen to you, that death
should bereave