can, and I will do it. But
I am still of opinion nothing is so likely to make us both happy as
what I propose. I foresee I may break with you on this point, and I
shall certainly be displeased with myself for it, and wish a thousand
times that I had done whatever you pleased; but, however, I hope I
shall always remember how much more miserable than anything else
would make me, should I be to live with you and to please you no
longer. You can be pleased with nothing when you are not pleased with
your wife. One of the "Spectators" is very just that says, "A man
ought always to be upon his guard against spleen and a too severe
philosophy; a woman, against levity and coquetry." If we go to Naples,
I will make no acquaintance there of any kind, and you will be in a
place where a variety of agreeable objects will dispose you to be ever
pleased. If such a thing is possible, this will secure our everlasting
happiness; and I am ready to wait on you without leaving a thought
behind me.

II

INOCULATION FOR THE SMALLPOX[15]

Apropos of distempers, I am going to tell you a thing that will make
you wish yourself here. The smallpox, so fatal and so general amongst
us, is here entirely harmless, by the invention of ingrafting, which
is the term they give it. There is a set of old women who make it
their business to perform the operation every autumn, in the month of
September, when the great heat is abated. People send to one another
to know if any of their family has a mind to have the smallpox; they
make parties for this purpose, and when they are met (commonly fifteen
or sixteen together), the old woman comes with a nutshell full of the
matter of the best sort of smallpox, and asks what vein you please to
have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer with a large
needle (which gives you no more pain than a common scratch), and puts
into the vein as much matter as can lie upon the head of her needle,
and after that binds up the little wound with a hollow bit of shell;
and in this manner opens four or five veins.

The Grecians have commonly the superstition of opening one in the
middle of the forehead, one in each arm, and one in the breast, to
mark the sign of the cross; but this has a very ill effect, all these
wounds leaving little scars, and is not done by those that are not
superstitious, who choose to have them in the legs, or that part of
the arm that is concealed. The children or young patients play
tog