you to some of
them.--Gad! that announce is a select word; I wonder where I picked it
up.

JONATHAN

I don't want to know them.

JESSAMY

Come, come, my dear friend, I see that I must assume the honour of
being the director of your amusements. Nature has given us passions,
and youth and opportunity stimulate to gratify them. It is no shame,
my dear Blueskin, for a man to amuse himself with a little gallantry.

JONATHAN

Girl huntry! I don't altogether understand. I never played at that
game. I know how to play hunt the squirrel, but I can't play anything
with the girls; I am as good as married.

JESSAMY

Vulgar, horrid brute! Married, and above a hundred miles from his
wife, and thinks that an objection to his making love to every woman he
meets! He never can have read, no, he never can have been in a room
with a volume of the divine Chesterfield.--So you are married?

JONATHAN

No, I don't say so; I said I was as good as married, a kind of promise.

JESSAMY

As good as married!--

JONATHAN

Why, yes; there's Tabitha Wymen, the deacon's daughter, at home; she
and I have been courting a great while, and folks say as how we are to
be married; and so I broke a piece of money with her when we parted,
and she promised not to spark it with Solomon Dyer while I am gone.
You wouldn't have me false to my true-love, would you?

JESSAMY

May be you have another reason for constancy; possibly the young lady
has a fortune? Ha! Mr. Jonathan, the solid charms: the chains of love
are never so binding as when the links are made of gold.

JONATHAN

Why, as to fortune, I must needs say her father is pretty dumb rich; he
went representative for our town last year. He will give her--let me
see--four times seven is--seven times four--nought and carry one,-- he
will give her twenty acres of land--somewhat rocky though--a Bible, and
a cow.

JESSAMY

Twenty acres of rock, a Bible, and a cow! Why, my dear Mr. Jonathan,
we have servant-maids, or, as you would more elegantly express it,
waitresses, in this city, who collect more in one year from their
mistresses' cast clothes.

JONATHAN

You don't say so!--

JESSAMY

Yes, and I'll introduce to one of them. There is a little lump of
flesh and delicacy that lives at next door, waitress to Miss Maria; we
often see her on the stoop.

JONATHAN

But are you sure she would be courted by me?

JESSAMY

Never doubt it; remembe