Читать книгу Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century - Various - Страница 17

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Her lightness gets her to swim at top of the table, where her wry little finger bewrays carving; her neighbours at the latter end know they are welcome, and for that purpose she quencheth her thirst. She travels to and among, and so becomes a woman of good entertainment, for all the folly in the country comes in clean linen to visit her; she breaks to them her grief in sugar cakes, and receives from their mouths in exchange many stories that conclude to no purpose. Her eldest son is like her howsoever, and that dispraiseth him best; her utmost drift is to turn him fool, which commonly she obtains at the years of discretion. She takes a journey sometimes to her niece's house, but never thinks beyond London. Her devotion is good clothes--they carry her to church, express their stuff and fashion, and are silent if she be more devout; she lifts up a certain number of eyes instead of prayers, and takes the sermon, and measures out a nap by it, just as long. She sends religion afore to sixty, where she never overtakes it, or drives it before her again. Her most necessary instruments are a waiting gentlewoman and a chambermaid; she wears her gentlewoman still, but most often leaves the other in her chamber window. She hath a little kennel in her lap, and she smells the sweeter for it. The utmost reach of her providence is the fatness of a capon, and her greatest envy is the next gentlewoman's better gown. Her most commendable skill is to make her husband's fustian bear her velvet. This she doth many times over, and then is delivered to old age and a chair, where everybody leaves her.