rather than two mothers. “Let us now consider the comforts of life, the humours and the manners. He that would be rich must play the thief or the cheat; he that would rise in the world must turn parasite, informer, or projecter. He that marries ventures fair for the horn, either before or after. There is no valour without swearing, quarrelling, or hectoring. If ye are poor, nobody owns ye. If rich, you’ll know nobody. If you die young, ‘What pity it was,’ they’ll say, ‘that he should be cut off thus in his prime.’ If old, ‘He was e’en past his best; there’s no great miss of him.’ If you are religious, and frequent the church and the sacrament, you’re an hypocrite; and without this, you’re an atheist or an heretic. If you are gay and pleasant, you pass presently for a buffoon; and if pensive and reserved, you are taken to be sour and censorious. Courtesy is called colloguing and currying of favour; downright honesty and plain-dealing is interpreted to be pride and ill manners. This is the world; and for all that’s in’t I would not have it to go over again. If any of ye, my masters,” said he to his camerades, “be of another opinion, hold up your hands.” “No, no,” they cried all unanimously, “no more generation-work, I beseech ye; better the devils than the midwives.” After this came a testator, cursing and raving like a bedlam, that he had made his last will and testament. “Ah villein!” said he, “for a man to murder himself as I have done! If I had not sealed, I had not died. Of all things, next a physician, deliver me from a testament. It has killed more than the pestilence. Oh miserable mortals, let the living take warning by the dead, and make no testaments. It was my hard luck, first to put my life into the physician’s power, and then, by making my will, to sign the sentence of death upon myself, and my own execution. ‘Put your soul and your estate in order,’ says the doctor, ‘for there’s no hope of life;’ and the word was no sooner out, but I was so wise and devout (forsooth) as to fall immediately upon the prologue of my will, with an _In nomine Domini_, Amen, etc. And when I came to dispose of my goods and chattels I pronounced these bloody words (I would I had been tongue-tied when I did it), ‘I make and constitute my son, my sole executor. _Item_, to my dear wife, I give and bequeath all my plays and romances, and all the furniture in the rooms upon the second storey. To my very good friend T. B. my large tankard, for a remembrance. To my foot-boy Robin, five pound to bind him prentice. To Betty, that tended me in my sickness, my little caudle-cup. To Mr. Doctor, my fair table diamond, for his care of me in my illness.’ After signing, and sealing, the ink was scarce dry upon the paper, but methought the earth opened as if it had been hungry to devour me. My son and my legatees were presently casting it up, how many hours I might yet hold out. If I called for the cordial julep, or a little of Dr.