s
often complained to me, with tears in his eyes, of the late hours he is
forced to keep if he would enjoy his wife's conversation. When she
returns to me with joy in her face, it does not arise, says he, from the
sight of her husband but from the good luck she has had at cards.

10. On the contrary, says he, if she has been a loser, I am doubly a
sufferer by it. She comes home out of humor, is angry with every body,
displeased with all I can do or say, and in reality for no other reason
but because she has been throwing away my estate. What charming bed
fellows and companions for life are men likely to meet with, that chuse
their wives out of such women of vogue and fashion? What a race of
worthies, what patriots, what heroes must we expect from mothers of this
make?

11. I come in the next place to consider the ill consequences which
gaming has on the bodies of our female adventurers. It is so ordered,
that almost every thing which corrupts the soul decays the body. The
beauties of the face and mind are generally destroyed by the same means.
This consideration should have a particular weight with the female
world, who are designed to please the eye and attract the regards of the
other half of the species.

12. Now there is nothing that wears out a fine face like the vigils of
the card table, and those cutting passions which naturally attend them.
Hollow eyes, haggard looks, and pale complexions, are the natural
indications of a female gamester. Her morning sleeps are not able to
repair her midnight watchings.

13. I have known a woman carried off half dead from bassette, and have
many a time grieved, to see a person of quality gliding by me in her
chair at two o'clock in the morning, and looking like a spectre amidst a
glare of flambeaux: in short, I never knew a thorough-paced female
gamester hold her beauty two winters together.

14. But there is still another case in which the body is more endangered
than in the former. All play-debts must be paid in specie, or by an
equivalent. The man that plays beyond his income pawns his estate; the
woman must find out something else to mortgage when her pin-money is
gone. The husband has his lauds to dispose of, the wife her person. Now
when the female body is once _dipped_, if the creditor be very
importunate, I leave my reader to consider the consequences.

15. It is needless here to mention the ill consequences attending this
passion among the men, who are often bubb