Creditur, ex medio quia res arcessit, habere
  Sudoris minimum—­

  Hor.

  Mr. SPECTATOR,

Your Speculations do not so generally prevail over Mens Manners as I could wish.  A former Paper of yours [1] concerning the Misbehaviour of People, who are necessarily in each others Company in travelling, ought to have been a lasting Admonition against Transgressions of that Kind:  But I had the Fate of your Quaker, in meeting with a rude Fellow in a Stage-Coach, who entertained two or three Women of us (for there was no Man besides himself) with Language as indecent as was ever heard upon the Water.  The impertinent Observations which the Coxcomb made upon our Shame and Confusion were such, that it is an unspeakable Grief to reflect upon them.  As much as you have declaimed against Duelling, I hope you will do us the Justice to declare, that if the Brute has Courage enough to send to the Place where he saw us all alight together to get rid of him, there is not one of us but has a Lover who shall avenge the Insult.  It would certainly be worth your Consideration, to look into the frequent Misfortunes of this kind, to which the Modest and Innocent are exposed, by the licentious Behaviour of such as are as much Strangers to good Breeding as to Virtue.  Could we avoid hearing what we do not approve, as easily as we can seeing what is disagreeable, there were some Consolation; but since [in a Box at a Play,][2] in an Assembly of Ladies, or even in a Pew at Church, it is in the Power of a gross Coxcomb to utter what a Woman cannot avoid hearing, how miserable is her Condition who comes within the Power of such Impertinents?  And how necessary is it to repeat Invectives against such a Behaviour?  If the Licentious had not utterly forgot what it is to be modest, they would know that offended Modesty labours under one of the greatest Sufferings to which human Life can be exposed.  If one of these Brutes could reflect thus much, tho they want Shame, they would be moved, by their Pity, to abhor an impudent Behaviour in the Presence of the Chaste and Innocent.  If you will oblige us with a Spectator on this Subject, and procure it to be pasted against every Stage-Coach in Great-Britain, as the Law of the Journey, you will highly oblige the whole Sex, for which you have professed so great an Esteem; and in particular, the two Ladies my late Fellow-Sufferers, and,

  SIR, Your most humble Servant,

  Rebecca Ridinghood.

  Mr. SPECTATOR,

The Matter which I am now going to send you, is an unhappy Story in low Life, and will recommend it self, so that you must excuse the Manner of expressing it.  A poor idle drunken Weaver in Spittle-Fields has a faithful laborious Wife, who by her Frugality and Industry had laid by her as much Money as purchased her a Ticket in the present Lottery.  She had hid this very privately in the Bottom of a Trunk,