I saw one in consultation with a cunning man to know her fortune; another, dealing with a conjurer for a philter, or drink to make her beloved. A third was daubing and patching up an old ruined face, to make it fresh and young again; but she might as well have been washing of a blackamoor to make him white. In fine, a world there were, that with their borrowed hair, teeth, eyes, eyebrows, looked like fine folks at a distance, but would have been left as ridiculous as Æsop’s crow, if every bird had fetched away his own feather. ’Deliver me (thought I, smiling and shaking my head) if this be woman. And so I stepped into the men’s quarter, which was but next door, and only a thick wall between. Their great misery was that they were deaf to good advice, obstinately hating and despising both physic and physician; for if they would have either quitted or changed, they might have been cured. But they chose rather to die, and though they saw their error, would not mend it. Which minded me of the old rhyme: Where love’s in the case, The doctor’s an ass. These fools-male were all in the same chamber; and one might perfectly read their humour and distemper in their looks and gestures. Oh! how many a gay lad did I see there in his point band and embroidered vest that had not a whole shirt to his back! How many huffs and highboys that had nothing else in their mouths but the lives and fortunes they’d spend in their sweet ladies’ service! that would yet have run five miles on your errand, to have been treated but at a threepenny ordinary? How many a poor devil that wanted bread, and was yet troubled with the rebellion of the flesh! Some there were that spent much time in setting their perukes, ordering the mustache, and dressing up the very face of Lucifer himself for a beauty: the woman’s privilege, and in truth an encroachment, to their prejudice. There were others that made it their glory to pass for Hectors, sons of Priam, brothers of the blade; and talked of nothing but attacks, combats, reverses, stramazons, stoccados; not considering that a naked weapon is present death to a timorous woman. Some were taking the round of their ladies’ lodgings, at midnight, and went to bed again as wise as they rose. Others fell in love by contagion and merely conversing with the infected. Some again went post from church to chapel, every holy day, to hunt for a mistress; and so turned a day of rest into a day of labour. Ye might see others skipping continually from house to house, like the knight upon a chess-board, without ever catching the (queen or) dame. Some, like crafty beggars, made their case worse than ’twas: and others, though ’twere ne’er so bad, durst not so much as open their mouths. Really it grieved me for the poor mutes, and I wished with all my heart their mistresses had been witches, that they might have known their meaning by their mumping; but they were lost to all counsel, so that there was no advising them. There