I’ll assure you, _Captain_, these verses are highly in esteem among all dealers in flesh, I have had many a dinner for a copy of them, to be put into a gilt frame, and hung up in a cook’s shop to give people a concocting laugh after dinner, that their victuals mayn’t lie heavy upon their stomachs. By this time I believe I have pretty well tir’d your patience, so think it full time to conclude myself, _Your Humble Servant_, W---- _From_ NELL GWIN _to_ PEG HUGHES. _Sister Peg_, Of all the concubines in christendom, that ever were happy in so kind a keeper, none sure ever squandered away the fruits of her labour so indiscreetly as yourself; whoring and gaming I acknowledge are two very serviceable vices in a common-wealth, because they make money circulate; but for a woman that has enrich’d herself by the one, to impoverish herself by the other, is so great a fault, that a harlot deserves correction for. Some people may think copulation a very easy and delightful way of getting money, but they are much mistaken, for the pains, you know as well as myself, which we take to please our benefactors, destroy our own pleasure, and make it become a toil we are forc’d to sweat at. Then who, but you, that had acquired such plentiful possessions by the labour of her bum, and sweat of her brows, would have tossed away thousands in a night upon the chance of a card, or fate of a die, as if you believed your honour was an _Indian_ mine, which would furnish you with gold to eternity for the trouble of digging: but now, Madam, you find yourself mistaken, for those crows-feet that have laid hold of the corners of your eyes, and wrinkly age, that in spight of art, supplies the places of your absent charms, fright away the amorous and the generous from your experienc’d embraces: besides, women, I hear, are so plentiful upon earth, that a lady of our quality, must be the true copy of an angel in appearance, whose favours shall be thought worth meat, drink, washing, lodging, and cloaths; so that a pretty woman now a-days may make a slave of her bumfiddle for thirty years together, and not get money enough to keep her out of an hospital, or an alms-house at the age of fifty. I, you see, thro’ the whole course of my life, maintain’d my post, and as I was mistress to a king, liv’d as great as a duchess to my last minute; and you, like an extravagant concubine, to game away an estate, in few years, large enough to have maintain’d a score of younger brothers listed into your ladyship’s service, who would have drudg’d to oblige you as much as you did to delight the good old gentleman that gave it to you; fie upon’t, I am asham’d to think, that a woman who had wit enough to tickle a prince out of so fine an estate, should at last prove such a fool as to be bubbled of it by a little spotted ivory and painted paper; if that mouth could have spoke that had labour’d hard to earn the penny, and miser-like was