This is that jolly month or six weeks that all women talk so pleasantly of; because it learns them alwaies such a curious remembrance.  And really it is almost impossible that the husband at these rates can grow lean with it; because he as well as his wife sits to be cram’d up too:  And he can now with his dearest daily contrive and practice what the Nurse shall make ready, that his Child-bed wife may eat with a better appetite, and recover new strength again.  I would therefore advise the carefull Nurse as a friend, that she should be sure to provide her self with the Compleat Cook, that she might be the more ready to help the Child-bed woman to think upon what she hath a mind to have made ready, for her brains are but very weak yet; so that she cannot so quickly and easily remember at first what is pleasantest and wholesomest to be eaten.

O thrice happy new Father that have gotten such a prudent diligent and carefull Nurse for your Child-bed wife! what great Pleasure is this!  And behold, by this delicate eating and drinking, your Dearest begins from day to day to grow stronger and stronger; insomuch that she begins to throw the Pillow at you, to spur you up to be desirous of coming to bed to her:  Yea, she promiseth you, that before she is out of Child-bed, she will make you possessor of another principal and main Pleasure.

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[Illustration:  Folio 141. Published by the Navarre Society, London.]

THE NINTH PLEASURE.

Of the Gossips Feast.

Now, O new Father, you have had the possession of eight pleasures, which undoubtedly have tickled you to some purpose.

But now there is a new one approaching, that will be as full of so many joyfull delights and wishings of prosperity, as ever the first and most famous hath been; for it seems as if your Child-bed wife begins to be a weary of this lazy liquorish life, and to leave off her grunting and groaning; because she now longs to be gadding up and down the street, or standing at the dore with her Babe in her arms.

But before this can be done, you know that there ought to be a Gossips Feast kept.  To this end the Nurse must be sent abroad; and a serious Counsel held, as if the Parliament of women were assembled, to consult who shall be invited, and who not. ’s Wounds, what a list of relations and strange acquaintance are here sum’d up in a company together, to be invited to the Gossipping Feast.  ’Tis impossible, the Nurse can ever do this all in one day; because she would not willingly miss any of them, out of the earnest hopes she hath of the Presents she expects.  And then also she must give an account to every one of them that are invited of the state and condition of the Child-bed woman and her Child.  I wonder that there is no body that sollicites to have the Office of an Inviter to all such sort of Gossippings, but the women understand these affairs and the ordering of such sort of invitations much better than any one else, therefore ’tis not necessary.