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another. And all will grant it is the most provident way for a man to spend but little abroad, and keep the better house at home; and if so, he may well permit his wife to entertain her friends now and then without prejudice to her husband’s estate; for a glass of wine tastes as well at home as abroad; and a capon may be cheaper dressed in his own kitchen than at a French ordinary. And as for women wearing fine clothes, which some object against, I say it is for the honour of the nation in general, and must be a particular pleasure to the husband to see his wife as fine as her neighbours.
But there is another pleasure attends upon matrimony, and that is, if he has married a wife who has got a relation in the country, and it is ten to one but she has, for women do not rise out of the earth like pompious, but their pedigrees has somewhere or other a beginning. If the woman has not, perhaps the man has. And whether their relations be by the man or the woman it is no matter; and therefore, when they have once contracted matrimony, all their relations must be acquainted with it. And in return, they must send up a letter, whereon they tell him, they shall be very glad to see them both in the country.
Upon this, she willing to see her friends before her lying in (for we will suppose her to be with
