ad and write
as well as most gentlemen, I can tell you that. Who told you Mr. Solmes
cannot read and write? But you must have a husband who can learn
you something!--I wish you knew but your duty as well as you do your
talents--that, Niece, you have of late days to learn; and Mr. Solmes
will therefore find something to instruct you in. I will not shew him
this letter of yours, though you seem to desire it, lest it should
provoke him to be too severe a schoolmaster, when you are his'n.

But now I think of it, suppose you are the reader at your pen than
he--You will make the more useful wife to him; won't you? For who so
good an economist as you?--And you may keep all of his accounts,
and save yourselves a steward.--And, let me tell you, this is a fine
advantage in a family: for those stewards are often sad dogs, and creep
into a man's estate before he knows where he is; and not seldom is he
forced to pay them interest for his own money.

I know not why a good wife should be above these things. It is better
than lying a-bed half the day, and junketing and card-playing all the
night, and making yourselves wholly useless to every good purpose in
your own families, as is now the fashion among ye. The duce take you all
that do so, say I!--Only that, thank my stars, I am a bachelor.

Then this is a province you are admirably versed in: you grieve that
it is taken from you here, you know. So here, Miss, with Mr. Solmes you
will have something to keep account of, for the sake of you and your
children: with the other, perhaps you will have an account to keep,
too--but an account of what will go over the left shoulder; only of what
he squanders, what he borrows, and what he owes, and never will pay.
Come, come, Cousin, you know nothing of the world; a man's a man; and
you may have many partners in a handsome man, and costly ones too, who
may lavish away all you save. Mr. Solmes therefore for my money, and I
hope for yours.

But Mr. Solmes is a coarse man. He is not delicate enough for your
niceness; because I suppose he dresses not like a fop and a coxcomb, and
because he lays not himself out in complimental nonsense, the poison of
female minds. He is a man of sense, that I can tell you. No man
talks more to the purpose to us: but you fly him so, that he has no
opportunity given him, to express it to you: and a man who loves, if he
have ever so much sense, looks a fool; especially when he is despised,
and treated as you treate