es who run to
the same excess of folly with her that their fathers ran; new dupes led
in the same mad dance after Madam Bubble and her three daughters. But,
always, and to all men, what a bubble both the mother and all her
daughters are! How they all make promises like their lying mother, and
how, like her, they all lead men, if not to the halter and to hell, as
Greatheart said, yet to a life of vanity and to a death of disappointment
and despair! What bubbles of empty hopes both she and her three children
blow up in the brains of men! What pictures of untold happiness they
paint in the imaginations of men! What pleasures, what successes in
life, what honours and what rewards she pledges herself to see bestowed!
"She has her times and open places of cheating," said one who knew her
and all her ways well. And when men and women are still young and
inexperienced, that is one of her great cheating times. At some seasons
of the year, and in some waters, to the fisherman's surprise and
confusion, the fish will sometimes take his bare hook; a bit of a red rag
is a deadly bait. And Madam Bubble's poorest and most perfunctory
busking is quite enough for the foolish fish she angles for. And not in
our salad days only, when we are still green in judgment, but even to
grey hairs, this wicked witch continues to entrap us to our ruin. Love,
in all its phases and in all its mixtures, first deludes the very young;
and then place, and power, and fame, and money are the bait she busks for
the middle-aged and the old; and always with the same bubble end. The
whole truth is that without God, the living and ever-present God, in all
ages of it and in all parts and experiences of it, our human life is one
huge bubble. A far-shining, high-soaring bubble; but sooner or later
seen and tasted to be a bubble--a deceit-filled, poison-filled
bubble.--Happy by her! All men happy by her! The impudent slut!

3. Another thing about this slut is this, that "she will talk with any
man." She makes up to us and makes eyes at us just as if we were free to
accept and return her three offers. And still she talks to us and offers
us the same things she offered to Standfast till, to escape her and her
offers, he betook himself to his knees. Nay, truth to tell, after she
had deceived us and ensnared us till we lay in her net cursing both her
and ourselves, so bold and so impudent and so persistent is this
temptress slut, and such fools and idiot