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finery of his former master, together with a pair of artificial whiskers that reached down to his toes. The hour of their nuptials was arrived; the whole family sympathized with their approaching happiness; the apartments were brightened up with lights that diffused the most exquisite perfume, and a lustre more bright than noon day. The lady expected her youthful lover in an inner apartment with impatience; when his servant approaching with terror in his countenance, informed her, that his master was fallen into a fit, which would certainly be mortal, unless the heart of a man lately dead, could be ob. tained, and applied to his breast. Shescarcely waited to hear the end of his story, when tucking up her cloaths, she ran with a mattock in her hand to the coffin where Choang lay, resolving to apply the heart of her dead husband as a cure for the living. Shetherefore struck the lid with the utmost violence. In a few blows the coffin flew open, when the body, which to all appearance had been dead, began to move. Terrified at the sight, Hansi dropped the mattock, and Choang walked out, astonished at his own situation, his wife's unusual magnificence, and her more amazing surprize. He went among the apartments, unable to conceive the cause of so much splendour. He was not long in suspense before his domestics informed him of every transaction since he first became insensible. He could scarcely believe what they told him, and went in pursuit of Hansi herself in order to receive more certain information or to reproach her infidelity. But she prevented his reproaches: he found her weltering in blood; for she had stabbed herself to the heart, being unable to survive her shame and disappointment.

Choang, being a philosopher, was too wise to make any loud lamentations: he thought it best to bear his loss with serenity: so, mending up the old coffin where he had lain himself, he placed his faith

less

less spouse in his room; and, unwilling that so many nuptial preparations should be expended in vain, he the same night maried the widow with the large fan.

As they both were apprised of the foibles of each other before hand, they knew how to excuse them after marriage. They lived together for many years in great tranquillity, and not expecting rapture, made a shift to find contentment. Farewell.

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THE gentleman dressed in black, who was my companion through Westminster Abbey, came yesterday to pay me a visit; and after drinking tea, we both resolved to take a walk together, in order to enjoy the freshness of the country, which now be gins to resume its verdure. Before we got out of the suburbs, however, we were stopped in one of the streets by a crowd of people, gathered in a cirele round a man and his wife, who seemed too loud and too angry to be understood. The people were highly pleased with the dispute, which upon enquiry we found to be between Dr. Cacafogo, an apothecary, and his wife. The doctor, it seems coming unexpectedly into his wife's apartment, found a gentleman there in circumstances not in the least equivocal.

The doctor, who was a person of nice honour, resolving to revenge the flagrant insult, immediately

to the chimney-piece, and taking down a rusty Anderluss, drew the trigger upon the defiler of his

bed;

bed; the delinquent would certainly have been shot through the head, but that the piece had not been charged for many years. The gallant made a shift to escape through the window, but the lady still remained; and, as she well knew her husband's temper, undertook to manage the quarrel without a second. He was furious, and she loud; their noise had gathered all the mob who charitably assembled on the occasion, not to prevent, but to enjoy the quarrel.

Alas! said I to my companion, what will become of this unhappy creature thus caught in adultery? Believe me, I pity her from my heart; her husband, I suppose, will shew her no mercy. Will they burn her as in India, or behead her as in Persia? Will they load her with stripes as in Turkey, or keep her in perpetual imprisonment, as with us in China? Prythee, what is the wife's punishment in England for such offences? When a lady is thus caught tripping, replied my companion, they never punish her, but the husband. You surely jest, interrupted I; I am a foreigner, and you would abuse my igno rance! I am really serious, returned he: Dr. Cacafogo has caught his wife in the act; but, as he had no witnesses, his small testimony goes for nothing; the consequence, therefore, of his discovery will be, that she will be packed off to live among her relations, and the doctor must be obliged to allow her a separate maintenance. Amazing! cried I; is it not enough, that she is permitted to live separate from the object she detests, but must he give her money to keep her in spirits too? That he must, said my guide, and be called a cuckold by all his neighbours into the bargain. The men will laugh at him, the ladies will pity him; and all that his warmest friends can say in his favour will be, that the poor good soul has never had any harm in him. I want patience, interrupted I; what! are there no private chastisements for the wife; no schools of pe

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I are conform my deer Fin, that of I were Far I voeding I would take care zi za pry into those secrets mide masz tudto keep from me. Sporld I detect her infcelty, what is the consequence? Ii I calzly pocket the aster, I am larghed at by her and her gallant; ifI tak my griefs aloud like a tragedy here, I am laughed at by the whole world. The course then I would take would be, whenever I went out, totell my wife where I was going, lest I should unexpectedly meet her abroad in company with some dear deceiver. Whenever I returned, I would use a peculiar rap at the door, and give four loud hens as I walked deliberately up the stair case. I would never inquisitively peep under her bed, or look behind the curtains. And even though I knew the captain was there, I would calmly take a dish of my wife's cool tea, and talk of the army with reverence.

Of all nations, the Russians seem to me to behave most wisely in such cirumstances. The wife promises her husband never to let him see her transressions of this nature; and he as punctually proses, whenever she is so detected, without the least inger, to beat her without mercy; so they both what each has to expect; the lady transgresses, s beaten, taken again into favour, and all goes on s before.

When a Russian young lady, therefore, is to be armed, her father, with a cudgel in his hand, se bridegroom, whether he chuses this virgin us bride? to which the other replies in the mative. Upon this, the father turning the lady

es round, and giving her three strokes with

his

his cudgel on the back; my dear, cries he, these are he last blows you are ever to receive from your tender father; I resign my authority, and my cudgel, to your husband; he knows better than me the use of either. The bridegroom knows decorum too well to accept of the cudgel abruptly; he assures the father that the lady will never want it, and that he would not, for the world, make any use of it; but the father, who knows what the lady may want better than he, insists upon his acceptance; upon this there follows a scene of Russian politeness, while one refuses, and the other offers the cudgel. The whole, however, ends with the bridegroom's taking it; upon which the lady drops a curtsey in token of obedience, and the ceremony proceeds as usual.

There is something excessively fair and open in this method of courtship: by this both sides are prepared for all the matrimonial adventures that are to follow. Marriage has been compared to a game of skill for life: it is generous thus in both parties to declare they are sharpers in the beginning. In England, I am told, both sides use every art to conceal their defects from each other before marriage, and the rest of their lives may be regarded as doing penance for their former dissimulation. Farewell.

LETTER XX.

FROM THE SAME.

THE republic of letters is a very common expression among the Europeans; and yet when applied to the learned of Europe, is the most absurd that can be imagined, since nothing is more unlike a republic

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