Page:Oration on the virtues of the old women, and the pride of the young (2).pdf/4

4 JANET’S ORATION. sted blankets, kept as mim in the month as a minister’s wife, comely as Diana, chaste as Susanna, yet the whole of their toil is the trimming of their rigging, tho’ their hulls be everlastingly in a leaking condition; their backs and their bellies are box’d about with the sins of a big fish, six petticoats, a gown and apron, besides a side sark down to the ancle-bones, ah! what monstrous rags are here what cloth is consumed for the covering to one pair of buttocks; I leave it to the judgment of any ten taylor in town, if thirty pair of men’s breeches may not be cut from a little above the easing of Bessy’s bum, and this makes her a motherly woman, as stately a fabric as ever strade to market or mill. But when she’s married, she turns a madam, her mistress did not work much, and why should she? Her mother tell’d ay slie wad be a lady, but cou’d never show where her lands lay; but when money is all spent, credit broken, and conduct out of keeping, a wheen babling bubly bairns crying piece minny, porech minny, the witless wanton waster is at her wit’s end. Work now or want, and do not say that the world has war'd you; but lofty Noddle, your giddy-headed mother has led you astray, by learning you to be a lady before you was fit to be a servantless, by teaching you laziness instead of hard labour, by giving you such a high conceit of yourself, that no body thinks any thing of you now, and you may judge yourself to be one of those that wise people call Little-worth; but after all, my dear dirty-face, when you begin the warld again, be perfectly rich before you be gentle, work hard for what you gain, and you’ll ken better how to guide it, for pride is an unperfect: fortune, and a ludicrous life w ill not last long. Another sort I see, who has got more silver than sense, more gold than good nature, more muslins and means than good manners; tho’ a sack can hold their silver, six houses and a half cannot contain their ambitious desires. Fortunatus’s wonderful purse would fail in fetching in the fourth part of their worldly wants, and the children inmate their mo