FALL IN LOVE WITH, AND MARRY THE WIDOW. 477

was almost cut quite down, but we eat none of it, for the other was fully enough for us both, and the maid made her supper of the oysters we had left, which were enough.

I mention this, because it should appear I did not treat her as a person I was making any court to, for I had nothing of that in my thoughts; but merely in pity to the poor woman, who I saw in a circumstance that was indeed very unhappy. When I gave her maid notice that supper was ready, she fetched her mistress, coming in before her with a candle in her hand, and then it was that I saw her face, and being in her dishabille, she had no hood over her eyes, or black upon her head, when I was truly surprised to see one of the most beautiful faces upon earth. I saluted her, and led her to the fire-side, the table, though spread, being too far from the fire, the weather being cold.

She was now something sociable, though very grave, and sighed often, on account of her circumstances; but she so handsomely governed her grief, yet so artfully made it mingle itself with all her discourse, that it added exceedingly to her behaviour, which was every way most exquisitely genteel. I had a great deal of discourse with her, and upon many subjects, and by degrees took her name, that is to say from herself, as I had done before from her maid; also the place where she lived, viz., near Ratcliff, or rather Stepney, where I asked her leave to pay her a visit, when she thought fit to admit company, which she seemed to intimate would not be a great while.

It is a subject too surfeiting to entertain people with the beauty of a person they will never see; let it suffice to tell them she was the most beautiful creature of her sex that I ever saw before or since; and it cannot be wondered if I was charmed with her, the very first moment I saw her face; her behaviour was likewise a beauty in itself, and was so extraordinary, that I cannot say I can describe it.

The next day she was much more free than she was the first night, and I had so much conversation, as to enter into particulars of things on both sides; also she gave me leave to come and see her house, which, however, I did not do under a fortnight, or thereabouts, because I did not know how far she would dispense with the ceremony which it was necessary to keep up at the beginning of the mourning..

However I came as a man that had business with her,

relating to the ship her husband was dead out of, and the first time I came was admitted, and, in short, the first time I came I made love to her; she received that proposal with disdain; I cannot indeed say she treated me with any disrespect, but she said she abhorred the offer, and would hear no more of it.

How I came to make such a proposal to her, I scarce knew then, though it was very much my intention from the first.

In the mean time I inquired into her circumstances and her character, and heard nothing but what was very agreeable of them both; and, above all, I found she had the report of the best-humoured lady, and the best-bred of all that part of the town; and now I thought I had found what I had so often wished for to make me happy, and had twice miscarried in, and resolved not to miss her, if it was possible to obtain her.

It came indeed a little into my thoughts, that I was a married man, and had a second wife alive, who, though she was false to me, and a whore, yet I was not legally divorced from her, and that she was my wife for all that; but I soon got over that part; for, first, as she was a whore, and the marquis had confessed it to me, I was divorced in law, and I had a power to put her away; but having had the misfortune of fighting a duel, and being obliged to quit the country, I could not claim the legal process which was my right, and therefore might conclude myself as much divorced as if it had been actually done, and so that scruple vanished.

I suffered now two months to run without pressing my widow any more, only I had kept a strict watch to find if any one else pretended to her; at the end of two months I visited her again, when I found she received me with more freedom, and we had no more sighs and sobs about the last husband; and though she would not let me press my former proposal, so far as I thought I might have done, yet I found I had leave to come again, and it was the article of decency which she stood upon as much as anything; that I was not disagreeable to her, and that my using her so handsomely upon the road had given me a great advantage in her favour.

I went on gradually with her, and gave her leave to stand off for two months more; but then I told her the matter of decency, which was but a ceremony, was not to stand in competition with the matter of affection; and, in short, I could not hear any longer delay, but that, if she thought fit, we

MY WIFE TAKES TO DRINKING.

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might marry privately; and, to cut the story short, as I did my courtship, in about five months I got her in the mind, and we were privately married, and that with so very exact a concealment that her maid that was so instrumental in it, yet had no knowledge of it for near a month more.

I was now, not only in my imagination, but in reality, the most happy creature in the world, as I was infinitely satisfied with my wife, who was indeed the best-humoured woman in the world, a most accomplished beautiful creature indeed, perfectly well-bred, and had not one ill quality about her; and this happiness continued without the least interruption for about six years.

But I, that was to be the most unhappy fellow alive in the article of matrimony, had at last a disappointment of the worst sort, even here. I had three fine children by her, and in her time of lying-in with the last, she got some cold, that she did not in a long time get off, and in short, she grew very sickly. In being so continually ill, and out of order, she very unhappily got a habit of drinking cordials and hot liquors. Drink, like the devil, when it gets hold of any one, though but a little, it goes on by little and little to their destruction so in my wife, her stomach being weak and faint, she first took this cordial, then that, till, in short, she could not live without them, and from a drop to a sup, from a sup to a dram, from a dram to a glass, and so on to two, till at last she took, in short, to what we call drinking.

;

As I likened drink to the devil, in its gradual possession of the habits and person, so it is yet more like the devil in its encroachment on us, where it gets hold of our senses; in short my beautiful, good-humoured, modest, well-bred wife, grew a beast, a slave to strong liquor, and would be drunk at her own table, nay, in her own closet by herself, till, instead of a well-made, fine shape, she was as fat as a hostess; her fine face, bloated and blotched, had not so much as the ruins of the most beautiful person alive, nothing remained but a good eye; that indeed she held to the last. In short, she lost her beauty, her shape, her manners, and at last her virtue; and, giving herself up to drinking, killed herself in about a year and a half after she first began that cursed trade, in which time she twice was exposed in the most scandalous manner with a captain of a ship, who, like a villain, took the advantage of her being in drink, and not knowing what she did;

but it had this unhappy effect, that, instead of her being ashamed, and repenting of it when she came to herself, it hardened her in the crime, and she grew as void of modesty at last as of sobriety.

O! the power of intemperance! and how it encroaches on the best dispositions in the world; how it comes upon us gradually and insensibly, and what dismal effects it works upon our morals, changing the most virtuous, regular, wellinstructed, and well-inclined tempers into worse than brutal ! That was a good story, whether real or invented, of the devil tempting a young man to murder his father: No, he said, that was unnatural. Why then, says the devil, go and lie with your mother. No, says he, that is abominable. Well then, says the devil, if you will do nothing else to oblige me, go and get drunk. Ay, ay, says the fellow, I will do that; so he went and made himself drunk as a swine, and when he was drunk, he murdered his father and lay with his mother.

Never was a woman more virtuous, modest, chaste, sober; she never so much as desired to drink anything strong; it was with the greatest entreaty that I could prevail with her to drink a glass or two of wine, and rarely, if ever, above one or two at a time; even in company she had no inclination to it. Not an immodest word ever came out of her mouth, nor would she suffer it in any one else in her hearing, without resentment and abhorrence: but upon that weakness and illness, after her last lying-in as above, the nurse pressed her, whenever she found herself faint, and a sinking of her spirits, to take this cordial, and that dram, to keep up her spirits, till it became necessary even to keep her alive, and gradually increased to a habit, so that it was no longer her physic but her food. Her appetite sunk and went quite away, and she eat little or nothing, but came at last to such a dreadful height, that, as I have said, she would be drunk in her own dressingroom by eleven o'clock in the morning, and, in short, at last was never sober.

In this life of hellish excess, as I have said, she lost all that was before so valuable in her, and a villain if it be proper to call a man by such a name, who was an intimate acquaintance, coming to pretend to visit her, made her and her maid so drunk together, that he abused both. Let any one judge what was my case now; I that for six years thought myself

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the happiest man alive, was now the most miserable distracted creature. As to my wife, I loved her so well, and was so sensible of the disaster of her drinking being the occasion of it all, that I could not resent it to such a degree as I had done in her predecessor, but I pitied her heartily; however, I put away all her servants, and almost locked her up, that is to say, I set new people over her, who would not suffer to come near her without my knowledge.

any one

I

CHAPTER XVI.

MEET AND FIGHT HER CAPTAIN, AND THRASH HIM HEARTILY-MY WIFE'S DEATH-ENTERTAIN THOUGHTS OF

A

FOURTH WIFE-COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE WITH MY FACTOR'S DAUGHTER-SHE MAKES ME AN EXCELLENT WIFE, BUT DIES AT THE END OF FOUR YEARS-I RETURN TO VIRGINIA, AND MEET WITH A WONDERFUL SURPRISE.

BUT what to do with the villain that had thus abused both her and me, that was the question that remained; to fight him upon equal terms, I thought was a little hard; that after a man had treated me as he had done, he deserved no fair play for his life; so I resolved to wait for him in Stepney fields, and which way he often came home pretty late, and pistol him in the dark, and, if possible, to let him know what I killed him for, before I did it; but when I came to consider of this, it shocked my temper too as well as principle, and I could not be a murderer, whatever else I could be, or whatever I was provoked to be.

However, I resolved on the other hand, that I would severely correct him for what he had done, and it was not long before I had an opportunity; for, hearing one morning that he was walking across the fields from Stepney to Shadwell, which way I knew he often went, I waited for his coming home again, and fairly met him.

I had not many words with him, but told him I had long looked for him; that he knew the villany he had been guilty of in my family, and he could not believe, since he knew also that I was fully informed of it, but that I must be a great Coward, as well as a cuckold, or that I would resent it, and