d many hands may make the work light; but for a
private gentleman, of a small fortune, to be obliged to keep so many idle
jades, when one might do the business, is intolerable, and matter of
great grievance.

I cannot close this discourse without a gentle admonition and reproof to
some of my own sex, I mean those gentlemen who give themselves
unnecessary airs, and cannot go to see a friend, but they must kiss and
slop the maid; and all this is done with an air of gallantry, and must
not be resented. Nay, some gentlemen are so silly, that they shall carry
on an underhand affair with their friend's servant-maid, to their own
disgrace, and the ruin of many a young creature. Nothing is more base
and ungenerous, yet nothing more common, and withal so little taken
notice of. D-n me, Jack, says one friend to another, this maid of yours
is a pretty girl, you do so and so to her, by G-d. This makes the
creature pert, vain, and impudent, and spoils many a good servant.

What gentleman will descend to this low way of intrigue, when he shall
consider that he has a footboy or an apprentice for his rival, and that
he is seldom or never admitted, but when they have been his tasters; and
the fool of fortune, though he comes at the latter end of the feast, yet
pays the whole reckoning; and so indeed would I have all such silly
cullies served.

If I must have an intrigue, let it be with a woman that shall not shame
me. I would never go into the kitchen, when the parlour door was open.
We are forbidden at Highgate, to kiss the maid when we may kiss the
mistress; why then will gentlemen descend so low, by too much familiarity
with these creatures, to bring themselves into contempt?

I have been at places where the maid has been so dizzied with these idle
compliments that she has mistook one thing for another, and not regarded
her mistress in the least; but put on all the flirting airs imaginable.
This behaviour is nowhere so much complained of as in taverns,
coffeehouses, and places of public resort, where there are handsome bar-
keepers, &c. These creatures being puffed up with the fulsome flattery
of a set of flesh-flies, which are continually buzzing about them, carry
themselves with the utmost insolence imaginable; insomuch, that you must
speak to them with a great deal of deference, or you are sure to be
affronted. Being at a coffeehouse the other day, where one of these
ladies kept the bar, I had bespoke a dish of rice tea;