men
run into hazardous things in trade, and, without prudence or due
consideration, launched their fortunes in a degree beyond their
strength, grasping at adventures beyond their stocks, and the like; but
that, as he was stated in the world, if I would embark with him, he had
a fortune equal with mine; that together we should have no occasion of
engaging in business any more, but that in any part of the world where I
had a mind to live, whether England, France, Holland, or where I would,
we might settle, and live as happily as the world could make any one
live; that if I desired the management of our estate, when put together,
if I would not trust him with mine, he would trust me with his; that we
would be upon one bottom, and I should steer. "Ay," says I, "you'll
allow me to steer--that is, hold the helm--but you'll con the ship, as
they call it; that is, as at sea, a boy serves to stand at the helm, but
he that gives him the orders is pilot."

He laughed at my simile. "No," says he; "you shall be pilot then; you
shall con the ship." "Ay," says I, "as long as you please; but you can
take the helm out of my hand when you please, and bid me go spin. It is
not you," says I, "that I suspect, but the laws of matrimony puts the
power into your hands, bids you do it, commands you to command, and
binds me, forsooth, to obey. You, that are now upon even terms with me,
and I with you," says I, "are the next hour set up upon the throne, and
the humble wife placed at your footstool; all the rest, all that you
call oneness of interest, mutual affection, and the like, is courtesy
and kindness then, and a woman is indeed infinitely obliged where she
meets with it, but can't help herself where it fails."

Well, he did not give it over yet, but came to the serious part, and
there he thought he should be too many for me. He first hinted that
marriage was decreed by Heaven; that it was the fixed state of life,
which God had appointed for man's felicity, and for establishing a legal
posterity; that there could be no legal claim of estates by inheritance
but by children born in wedlock; that all the rest was sunk under
scandal and illegitimacy; and very well he talked upon that subject
indeed.

But it would not do; I took him short there. "Look you, sir," said I,
"you have an advantage of me there indeed, in my particular case, but it
would not be generous to make use of it. I readily grant that it were
better for me to have married you