into the next room, that hath a couch or
bed in it, and bestow your charity upon a dying man! A little comfort
from a mistress, before a man is going to give himself in marriage, is
as good as a lusty dose of strong-water to a dying malefactor: it
takes away the sense of hell and hanging from him.

_Dor._ No, good Palamede, I must not be so injurious to your bride:
'Tis ill drawing from the bank to-day, when all your ready money is
payable to-morrow.

_Pala._ A wife is only to have the ripe fruit, that falls of itself;
but a wise man will always preserve a shaking for a mistress.

_Dor._ But a wife for the first quarter is a mistress.

_Pala._ But when the second comes--

_Dor._ When it does come, you are so given to variety, that you would
make a wife of me in another quarter.

_Pala._ No, never, except I were married to you: married people can
never oblige one another; for all they do is duty, and consequently
there can be no thanks: But love is more frank and generous than he is
honest; he's a liberal giver, but a cursed pay-master.

_Dor._ I declare I will have no gallant; but, if I would, he should
never be a married man; a married man is but a mistress's
half-servant, as a clergyman is but the king's half-subject: For a man
to come to me that smells of the wife! 'Slife, I would as soon wear
her old gown after her, as her husband.

_Pala._ Yet 'tis a kind of fashion to wear a princess's cast shoes;
you see the country ladies buy them, to be fine in them.

_Dor._ Yes, a princess's shoes may be worn after her, because they
keep their fashion, by being so very little used; but generally a
married man is the creature of the world the most out of fashion: his
behaviour is dumpish; his discourse, his wife and family; his habit so
much neglected, it looks as if that were married too; his hat is
married, his peruke is married, his breeches are married,--and, if we
could look within his breeches, we should find him married there too.

_Pala._ Am I then to be discarded for ever? pray do but mark how that
word sounds: for ever! it has a very damn'd sound, Doralice.

_Dor._ Ay, for ever! it sounds as hellishly to me, as it can do to
you, but there's no help for it.

_Pala._ Yet, if we had but once enjoyed one another!--but then once
only, is worse than not at all: It leaves a man with such a lingering
after it.

_Dor._ For aught I know, 'tis better that we have not; we might upon
trial have liked each other les