clocks; and her high wooden pattens are kicked away for leathern clogs;
she must have a hoop too, as well as her mistress; and her poor scanty
linsey-woolsey petticoat is changed into a good silk one, for four or
five yards wide at the least. Not to carry the description farther, in
short, plain country Joan is now turned into a fine London madam, can
drink tea, take snuff, and carry herself as high as the best.

If she be tolerably handsome, and has any share of cunning, the
apprentice or her master's son is enticed away and ruined by her. Thus
many good families are impoverished and disgraced by these pert sluts,
who, taking the advantage of a young man's simplicity and unruly desires,
draw many heedless youths, nay, some of good estates, into their snares;
and of this we have but too many instances.

Some more artful shall conceal their condition, and palm themselves off
on young fellows for gentlewomen and great fortunes. How many families
have been ruined by these ladies? when the father or master of the
family, preferring the flirting airs of a young prinked up strumpet, to
the artless sincerity of a plain, grave, and good wife, has given his
desires aloose, and destroyed soul, body, family, and estate. But they
are very favourable if they wheedle nobody into matrimony, but only make
a present of a small live creature, no bigger than a bastard, to some of
the family, no matter who gets it; when a child is born it must be kept.

Our sessions' papers of late are crowded with instances of servant-maids
robbing their places, this can be only attributed to their devilish
pride; for their whole inquiry nowadays is, how little they shall do, how
much they shall have.

But all this while they make so little reserve, that if they fall sick