11
By this time dinner is upon the table, and marinalled with as much formality as at Lord Mayor’s feast. After the parson says grace, they fall to without farther ceremony; and here comes a new pleasure to the bridegroom, to see all the guests address their glasses to the bride, and afterwards to him. And it will be a pleasure extraordinary to him if he can butkeep himself sober till he goes to bed.
Nor is it less pleasure to hear the discourse at the table after the second course, when a jolly red nosed toper, a pot companion of the bride’s father, began, saying, Marriage was instituted in a state of innocency, nay, even in Paradise; and that without it; the church would want pastors, and the kingdom soldiers to defend it.—
Nay, farther, that children are blessings from heaven, and therefore barrenness was accounted the greatest scandal in the world among the Jewish women: Aye and by the English women too, replies a grave old matron, and I should be sorry that my young mistress here, as well for my own sake as her’s, should be under that curse; for I hope ere ten months, to carry her first boy to the font.
