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merrily, for as long as it would last. She turned short upon me, What do you mean, says she; why, you do not pretend to be uneasy, do ye? No, no, madam, not I, by no means; it is no business of mine, you know, said I, to inquire what my wife spends, or whether she spends more than I can afford, or less; I only desire the favour to know, as near as you can guess, how long you will please to take to despatch me, for I would not be too long a dying.

I do not know what you talk of, says she; you may die as leisurely, or as hastily, as you please, when your time comes; I an't a going to kill you, as I know of.

But you are a going to starve me, madam, said I, and hunger is as leisurely a death as breaking upon the wheel.

I starve you! why are not you a great Virginia merchant, and did not I bring you 15007.? What would you have? Sure, you can maintain a wife out of that, can't you?

Yes, madam, says I, I could maintain a wife, but not a gamester, though you had brought me 1500l. a year; no estate is big enough for a box and dice.

She took fire at that, and flew out in a passion, and, after a great many bitter words, told me in short, that she saw no occasion to alter her conduct; and as for my not maintaining her, when I could not maintain her longer, she would find some way or other to maintain herself.

Some time after the first rattle of this kind, she vouchsafed to let me know that she was pleased to be with child; I was at first glad of it, in hopes it would help to abate her madness; but it was all one, and her being with child only added to the rest, for she made such preparations for her lying-in, and the other appendixes of a child's being born, that, in short, I found she would be downright distracted; and I took the liberty to tell her one day, that she would soon bring herself and me to destruction, and entreated her to consider that such figures as those were quite above us, and out of our circle; and, in short, that I neither could, nor would, allow such expenses; that, at this rate, two or three children would effectually ruin me, and that I desired her to consider what she was doing.

She told me, with an air of disdain, that it was none of her business to consider anything of that matter; that if I could not allow it, she would allow it herself, and I might do my

worst.

I begged her to consider things for all that, and not drive me to extremities; that I married her to love and cherish her, and use her as a good wife ought to be used, but not to be ruined and undone by her. In a word, nothing could mollify her, nor any argument persuade her to moderation, but withal she took it so heinously, that I should pretend to restrain her, that she told me in so many words, she would drop her burthen with me, and then, if I did not like it, she would take care of herself, she would not live with me an hour, for she would not be restrained, not she; and talked a long while at that rate.

I told her, as to her child, which she called her burthen, it should be no burthen to me; as to the rest she might do as she pleased; it might, however, do me this favour, that I should have no more lyings-in at the rate of 1367. at a time, as I found she intended it should be now. She told me she could not tell that; if she had no more by me, she hoped she should by somebody else. Say you so, madam? said I; then they that get them, shall keep them. She did not know that neither, she said, and so turned it off jeering, and as it were laughing at me.

This last discourse nettled me, I must confess, and the more, because I had a great deal of it, and very often, till, in short, we began at length to enter into a friendly treaty about parting.

Nothing could be more criminal than the several discourses we had upon this subject; she demanded a separate maintenance, and, in particular, at the rate of 3007. a year, and I demanded security of her, that she should not run me in debt; she demanded the keeping of the child, with an allowance of 100l. a year for that, and I demanding that I should be secured from being charged for keeping any she might have by somebody else, as she had threatened me.

In the interval, and during these contests, she dropped her burthen (as she called it), and brought me a son, a very fine child.

She was content, during her lying-in, to abate a little, though it was but a very little indeed, of the great expense she had intended; and with some difficulty and persuasion, was content with a suit of childbed-linen of 157. instead of one she had intended of threescore; and this she magnified as a particular testimony of her condescension, and a yielding to my avaricious temper, as she called it,

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But after she was up again, it was the same thing, and she went on with her humour to that degree, that in a little time she began to carry it on to other excesses, and to have a sort of fellows come to visit her, which I did not like, and once, in particular, stayed abroad all night. The next day, when she came home, she began to cry out first; told me where (as she said) she lay, and that the occasion was a christening, where the company had a feast, and stayed too late; that, if I was dissatisfied, I might inform myself there of all the particulars, where she lay, and the like. I told her coldly, Madam, you do well to suggest my being dissatisfied, for you may be sure I am, and you could expect no other; that as to going to your haunts to inform myself, that is not my business; it is your business to bring testimonies of your behaviour, and to prove where you lay, and in what company; it is enough to me that you lay out of your own house, without your husband's knowledge or consent, and before you and I converse again, I must have some satisfaction of the particulars.

She answered, with all her heart; she was as indifferent as I, and since I took so ill her lying at a friend's house on an extraordinary occasion, she gave me to understand, that it was what she would have me expect, and what she would have the liberty to do when she thought fit.

Well, madam, said I, if I must expect what I cannot allow, you must expect I shall shut my doors by day, against those that keep out of them at night.

She would try me, she said, very speedily; and if I shut the doors against her, she would find a way to make me open them.

Well, madam, says I, you threaten me hard, but I would advise you to consider before you take such measures, for I shall be as good as my word. However, it was not long that we could live together upon these terms; for I found very quickly what company she kept, and that she took a course which I ought not to bear; so I began the separation first, and refused her my bed; we had indeed refrained all converse as husband and wife for about two months before, for I told her very plainly, I would father no brats that were not of my own getting; and matters coming thus gradually to an extremity, too great to continue as it was, she went off one afternoon, and left me a line in writing, signifying that

affairs had come to such a pass between us, that she did not think fit to give me the opportunity of shutting her out of doors, and that therefore she had retired herself to such a place; naming a relation of her own, as scandalous as herself; and that she hoped I would not give her the trouble to sue for her support, in the ordinary course of law, but that, as her occasions required, she should draw bills upon me, which she expected I would not refuse.

CHAPTER XIII.

PART FROM MY WIFE-I AM INSULTED BY ONE OF HER EMISSARIES-WALKING OUT IN THE EVENING I AM WAYLAID AND WOUNDED-I OBTAIN A COMPANY IN A REGIMENT AND GO OVER TO FRANCE-ADVENTURES THERE.

I WAS extremely satisfied with this proceeding, and took care to let her hear of it, though I gave no answer at all to her letter; and as I had taken care before, that whenever she played such a prank as this, she should not be able to carry much with her, so, after she was gone, I immediately broke up housekeeping, sold my furniture by public outcry, and in it everything in particular that was her own, and set a bill upon my door, giving her to understand by it, that she had passed the Rubicon, that as she had taken such a step of her own accord, so there was no room left her ever to think of coming back again.

This was what any one may believe I should not have done, if I had seen any room for a reformation; but she had given me such testimonies of a mind alienated from her husband, in particular espousing her own unsufferable levity, that there was indeed no possibility of our coming afterwards to any terms again.

However, I kept a couple of trusty agents so near her, that I failed not to have a full account of her conduct, though I never let her know anything of me, but that I was gone over to France; as to her bills which she said she would draw upon me, she was as good as her word in drawing one of 30%, which I refused to accept, and never gave her leave to trouble me with another.

It is true, and I must acknowledge it, that all this was a

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very melancholy scene of life to me, and but that she took care by carrying herself to the last degree provoking, and continually to insult me, I could never have gone on to the parting with so much resolution, for I really loved her very sincerely, and could have been anything but a beggar and a cuckold with her, but those were intolerable to me, especially as they were put upon me with so much insult and rudeness. But my wife carried it at last to a point that made all things light and easy to me, for after above a year's separation, and keeping such company as she thought fit, she was pleased to be with child again, in which she had, however, so much honesty, as not to pretend that she had had anything to do with me; what a wretched life she led after this, and how she brought herself to the utmost extremity of misery and distress, I may speak of hereafter.

I had found, soon after our parting, that I had a great deal of reason to put myself into a posture at first not to be imposed upon by her; for I found very quickly that she had run herself into debt in several places very considerably; and that it was upon a supposition that I was liable to those debts; but I was gone, and it was absolutely necessary I should do so; upon which, she found herself obliged, out of her wicked gains, however, whatever she made of them, to discharge most of those debts herself.

As soon as she was delivered of her child, in which my intelligence was so good, that I had gotten sufficient proof of it, I sued her in the ecclesiastical court, in order to obtain a divorce; and as she found it impossible to avoid it, so she declined the defence, and I gained a legal decree, or what they call it, of divorce, in the usual time of such process; and now I thought myself a freeman once again, and began to be sick of wedlock with all my heart.

I lived retired, because I knew she had contracted debts which I should be obliged to pay, and I was resolved to be gone out of her reach, with what speed I could; but it was necessary that I should stay till the Virginia fleet came in, because I looked for at least three hundred hogsheads of tobacco from thence, which I knew would heal all my breaches; for indeed the extravagance of three years with this lady had sunk me most effectually, even far beyond her own fortune, which was considerable, though not quite 1500., as she had called it.