the largest Rooms, in order, as she phrases it, to see Company.  At which time she always desires me to be Abroad, or to confine my self to the Cock-loft, that I may not disgrace her among her Visitants of Quality.  Her Footmen, as I told you before, are such Beaus that I do not much care for asking them Questions; when I do, they answer me with a sawcy Frown, and say that every thing, which I find Fault with, was done by my Lady Marys Order.  She tells me that she intends they shall wear Swords with their next Liveries, having lately observed the Footmen of two or three Persons of Quality hanging behind the Coach with Swords by their Sides.  As soon as the first Honey-Moon was over, I represented to her the Unreasonableness of those daily Innovations which she made in my Family, but she told me I was no longer to consider my self as Sir John Anvil, but as her Husband; and added, with a Frown, that I did not seem to know who she was.  I was surprized to be treated thus, after such Familiarities as had passed between us.  But she has since given me to know, that whatever Freedoms she may sometimes indulge me in, she expects in general to be treated with the Respect that is due to her Birth and Quality.  Our Children have been trained up from their Infancy with so many Accounts of their Mothers Family, that they know the Stories of all the great Men and Women it has produced.  Their Mother tells them, that such an one commanded in such a Sea Engagement, that their Great Grandfather had a Horse shot under him at Edge-hill, that their Uncle was at the Siege of Buda, and that her Mother danced in a Ball at Court with the Duke of Monmouth; with abundance of Fiddle-faddle of the same Nature.  I was, the other Day, a little out of Countenance at a Question of my little Daughter Harriot, who asked me, with a great deal of Innocence, why I never told them of the Generals and Admirals that had been in my Family.  As for my Eldest Son Oddly, he has been so spirited up by his Mother, that if he does not mend his Manners I shall go near to disinherit him.  He drew his Sword upon me before he was nine years old, and told me, that he expected to be used like a Gentleman; upon my offering to correct him for his Insolence, my Lady Mary stept in between us, and told me, that I ought to consider there was some Difference between his Mother and mine.  She is perpetually finding out the Features of her own Relations in every one of my Children, tho, by the way, I have a little Chubfaced Boy as like me as he can stare, if I durst say so; but what most angers me, when she sees me playing with any of them upon my Knee, she has begged me more than once to converse with the Children as little as possibly, that they may not learn any of my awkward Tricks.

You must farther know, since I am opening my Heart to you, that she thinks her self my Superior in Sense, as much as she is in Quality, and therefore treats me like a plain well-meaning Man, who does not