ood estates, into their snares;
and of this we have but too many instances.

Some more artful shall conceal their condition, and palm themselves off
on young fellows for gentlewomen and great fortunes. How many families
have been ruined by these ladies? when the father or master of the
family, preferring the flirting airs of a young prinked up strumpet, to
the artless sincerity of a plain, grave, and good wife, has given his
desires aloose, and destroyed soul, body, family, and estate. But they
are very favourable if they wheedle nobody into matrimony, but only make
a present of a small live creature, no bigger than a bastard, to some of
the family, no matter who gets it; when a child is born it must be kept.

Our sessions' papers of late are crowded with instances of servant-maids
robbing their places, this can be only attributed to their devilish
pride; for their whole inquiry nowadays is, how little they shall do, how
much they shall have.

But all this while they make so little reserve, that if they fall sick
the parish must keep them, if they are out of place, they must prostitute
their bodies, or starve; so that from clopping and changing, they
generally proceed to whoring and thieving, and this is the reason why our
streets swarm with strumpets.

Thus many of them rove from place to place, from bawdy-house to service,
and from service to bawdy-house again, ever unsettled and never easy,
nothing being more common than to find these creatures one week in a good
family, and the next in a brothel. This amphibious life makes them fit
for neither, for if the bawd uses them ill, away they trip to service,
and if the mistress gives them a wry word, whip they are at a bawdy-house
again, so that in effect they neither make good whores nor good servants.

Those who are not thus slippery in the tail, are light of finger; and of
these the most pernicious are those who beggar you inchmeal. If a maid
is a downright thief she strips you, it once, and you know your loss; but
these retail pilferers waste you insensibly, and though you hardly miss
it, yet your substance shall decay to such a degree, that you must have a
very good bottom indeed not to feel the ill effects of such moths in your
family.

Tea, sugar, wine, &c., or any such trifling commodities, are reckoned no
thefts, if they do not directly take your pewter from your shelf, or your
linen from your drawers, they are very honest: What harm is there, say
they,