O Nature! why didst thou create such a plague for men as women; how happy were men had they never been; oh why could not Nature infuse the gift of procreation in men alone without the help of women? then should we never be acquainted with the deceitful devices of those Devils, Harpies, Cockatrices, the very Curse of man, dissembling monsters, only patcht up to cozen and gull men; borrowing their Hair from one, Complexions from another, nothing of their own that’s pleasing, all dissembled, not so much as their very breath is sophisticated with Amber pellets and kissing causes, and all to train poor man unto his ruine. A woman shee’s an Angel at ten, a Saint at fifteen, a Devil at forty, and a Witch at fourscore, so stufft with vice as leaves no place for vertue to inhabit; of such crooked conditions, and corrupt actions, that if all the world were paper, the Sea inke, trees and plants, penns, and all men Clerks, Scribes, and Notaries, yet would all that paper be scribled over, the inke wasted, penns worn to the stumps, and all the Scriveners weary, before they could describe the hundredth part of a womans wickedness, so that I may very well conclude with the Poet. _There is not one good woman to be found; And if one were, she merits to be crown’d._ This my Uncles invective puts me in mind of a story which I have heard since, concerning the scarcity of good women, that above five hundred years agone, there was a great sickness almost throughout the whole world, wherein there dyed forty four millions, eight hundred seventy two thousand, six hundred and eighty three good women, and of bad women only two hundred and fourteen; by reason whereof there hath been such a scarcity of good women ever since, the whole breed of them being then almost utterly extinct. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------------------------- CHAP. VIII. _His Aunt and the maid joyn together, and by a blinde wager make him to be laughed and hooted at by the boyes; he is soundly revenged on them both for the same._ Never was Prentice more subject to a Master then my Aunt was to my Uncle, after the discovery of her leachery; his desires were commands, and those commands laws which were by her put in speedy execution, if he bid her go, she would run; doe that, it was no sooner said then done, but the greatest miracle of all was, that if she were never so busy in talking, yet if he said but _peace_, she would suddenly hold her tounge, which before used to be in perpetual motion, and was as hard to be stopped as a stream when it hath overflowne its banks, or the sails of a mill when the wind blows in its greatest violence, so that a serene sky seemed to have succeeded that storm that all things were pacified, and that my Uncle had contentedly put his horns in his pocket.