er fortune for the future--I
say, if this has been her case, her folly calls for pity now, as her
pride did for contempt before; for as she was foolish in the first, she
may be miserable in the last part of it; for now she falls into a sea of
trouble, she has the satisfaction of knowing that her husband has died,
as the tradesmen call it, well to pass, and that she is left well
enough; but she has at the same time the mortification of knowing
nothing how to get it in, or in what hands it lies. The only relief she
has is her husband's books, and she is happy in that, but just in
proportion to the care he took in keeping them; even when she finds the
names of debtors, she knows not who they are, or where they dwell, who
are good, and who are bad; the only remedy she has here, if her husband
had ever a servant, or apprentice, who was so near out of his time as to
be acquainted with the customers, and with the books, then she is forced
to be beholden to him to settle the accounts for her, and endeavour to
get in the debts; in return for which she is forced to give him his time
and freedom, and let him into the trade, make him master of all the
business in the world, and it may be at last, with all her pride, has to
take him for a husband; and when her friends upbraid her with it, that
she should marry her apprentice boy, when it may be she was old enough
to be his mother, her answer is, 'Why, what could I do? I see I must
have been ruined else; I had nothing but what lay abroad in debts,
scattered about the world, and nobody but he knew how to get them in.
What could I do? If I had not done it, I must have been a beggar.' And
so, it may be, _she is_ at last too, if the boy of a husband proves a
brute to her, as many do, and as in such unequal matches indeed most
such people do. Thus, that pride which once set her above a kind,
diligent, tender husband, and made her scorn to stoop to acquaint
herself with his affairs, by which, had she done it, she had been
tolerably qualified to get in her debts, dispose of her shop-goods, and
bring her estate together--the same pride sinks her into the necessity
of cringing to a scoundrel, and taking her servant to be her master.

This I mention for the caution of those ladies who stoop to marry men of
business, and yet despise the business they are maintained by; that
marry the tradesman, but scorn the trade. If madam thinks fit to stoop
to the man, she ought never to think herself above o