Her draught reacheth to good manners, not to thirst, and it is a part of their mystery not to profess hunger; but nature takes her in private and stretcheth her upon meat.  She is marriageable and fourteen at once, and after she doth not live but tarry.  She reads over her face every morning, and sometimes blots out pale and writes red.  She thinks she is fair, though many times her opinion goes alone, and she loves her glass and the knight of the sun for lying.  She is hid away all but her face, and that’s hanged about with toys and devices, like the sign of a tavern, to draw strangers.  If she show more she prevents desire, and by too free giving leaves no gift.  She may escape from the serving-man, but not from the chambermaid.  Her philosophy is a seeming neglect of those that be too good for her.  She’s a younger brother for her portion, but not for her portion for wit—­that comes from her in treble, which is still too big for it; yet her vanity seldom matcheth her with one of her own degree, for then she will beget another creature a beggar, and commonly, if she marry better she marries worse.  She gets much by the simplicity of her suitor, and for a jest laughs at him without one.  Thus she dresses a husband for herself, and after takes him for his patience, and the land adjoining, ye may see it, in a serving-man’s fresh napery, and his leg steps into an unknown stocking.  I need not speak of his garters, the tassel shows itself.  If she love, she loves not the man, but the best of him.  She is Salomon’s cruel creature, and a man’s walking consumption; every caudle she gives him is a purge.  Her chief commendation is, she brings a man to repentance.

HER NEXT PART.

Her lightness gets her to swim at top of the table, where her wry little finger bewrays carving; her neighbours at the latter end know they are welcome, and for that purpose she quencheth her thirst.  She travels to and among, and so becomes a woman of good entertainment, for all the folly in the country comes in clean linen to visit her; she breaks to them her grief in sugar cakes, and receives from their mouths in exchange many stories that conclude to no purpose.  Her eldest son is like her howsoever, and that dispraiseth him best; her utmost drift is to turn him fool, which commonly she obtains at the years of discretion.  She takes a journey sometimes to her niece’s house, but never thinks beyond London.  Her devotion is good clothes—­they carry her to church, express their stuff and fashion, and are silent if she be more devout; she lifts up a certain number of eyes instead of prayers, and takes the sermon, and measures out a nap by it, just as long.  She sends religion afore to sixty, where she never overtakes it, or drives it before her again.  Her most necessary instruments are a waiting gentlewoman and a chambermaid; she wears her gentlewoman still, but most often leaves the other in her chamber window.  She hath a little kennel in her lap, and she smells the sweeter for it.  The utmost reach of her providence is the fatness of a capon, and her greatest envy is the next gentlewoman’s better gown.  Her most commendable skill is to make her husband’s fustian bear her velvet.  This she doth many times over, and then is delivered to old age and a chair, where everybody leaves her.