Colonel?

_Col._ Too often--money is the very god of marriage, the poets
dress him in a saffron robe by which they figure out the golden
Deity, and his lighted torch blazons those mighty charms, which
encourage us to list under his banner.

In "The Artifice" we have a matrimonial contention:

_Lucy._ If you two are one flesh, how come you to have different
minds, pray, Sir?

_Watchit._ Because the mind has nothing to do with the flesh.

_Mrs. W._ That's your mistake, Sir; the body is governed by the
mind. So much philosophy I know.

_Wat._ Yes, yes; I believe you understand natural philosophy very
well, wife; I doubt not the flesh has got the better of the spirit
in you. Look ye, madam! every man's wife is his vineyard; you are
mine, therefore I wall you in. Ods budikins, ne'er a coxcomb in the
kingdom shall plant as much as a primrose in my ground.

_Mrs. W._ I am sure your management will produce nothing but
thorns.

_Wat._ Nay, every wife is a thorn in her husband's side. Your whole
sex is a kind of sweet-briar, and he who meddles with it is sure to
prick his fingers.

_Lucy._ That is when you handle us too roughly.

_Mrs. W._ You are a kind of rue: neither good for smell nor taste.

_Wat._ But very wholesome, wife.

_Mrs. W._ Ay, so they say of all bitters, yet I would not be
obliged to feed on gentian and wormwood.

Some subjects are peculiarly suitable for light female humour. In "The
Beau's Duel, or a Soldier for the Ladies," we have the following
soliloquy by Sir William Mode, a fop, as he stands in his night-gown
looking into his glass:

This rising early is the most confounded thing on earth, nothing so
destructive to the complexion. Blister me, how I shall look in the
side box to-night, wretchedly upon my soul. [_looking in the glass
all the while._] Yet it adds something of a languishing air, not
altogether unbecoming, and by candle light may do mischief; but I
must stay at home to recover some colour, and that may be as well
laid on too; so 'tis resolved I will go. Oh 'tis unspeakable
pleasure to be in the side box, or bow'd to from the stage, and be
distinguished by the beaux of quality, to have a lord fly into
one's arms, and kiss one as amorously as a mistress. Then tell me
aloud, that he dined with his Grace and t