Oh how pleasant is th’estate of married people, above that of Batchelors and Maids? how it distributes Mirths and Pleasures!  Verily one may in some measure recogitate or write something of it, but it is impossible to imprint so Sun-like a splendor in Potters clay, or to display it with the most curious Colours.  Though the accomplishedst Painter might have drawn it very near the life, yet it would be but a dead draught, in comparison of the reality and experience that is found in it self.  You have already seen here nine Parts or Tables but it is not ninety Pictures that can sufficiently shew you the fulness of one of the nine Parts.

Be therefore chearfully merry, O sweet Couple, because you are in so short a time arisen to the height of being possessors of all these Pleasures:  And so much the more, the ninth being hardly past, before the tenth follows, as it were treading upon the heels of the t’other.

[Illustration:  Folio 188. Published by The Navarre Society, London.]

They have scarce wiped their mouths or digested the Child-bed Wine in their stomacks, before there starts up a new day of mirth & jollity; for now there must be a Child-bed feast kept & the child must be put in Cloaths.  O what two vast Pleasures are these for the young Father! ’tis indeed too much joy for one person alone to be possessor of.

At first you had the Pleasure for to treat the Women, those pretty pleasing Creatures, and to hear all their sweet and amiable discourses.  But now you shall be honoured with treating the Matron like Midwife, and those Men and Women that are your kindest friends and nearest relations; Yea and the God-Fathers and God-Mothers also who will all of them accompany you with courteous discourses and pleasant countenances:  They will begin a lusty Bowl or thumping glass, super naculum drink it out, upon the health & prosperity of you, your Bedfellow and young Son; and very heartily wish that you may increase and multiply, at least every year with one new Babe; because that they then might the better come to the Child-bed Feast.

Here you’l see now how smartly they’l both lick your dishes, and toss your Cups and Glasses off.  Begin you only some good healths, as; pray God bless his Majesty and all the Royal Family:  the Prosperity of our Native Country; all the Well wishers of the Cities welfare, &c.  And when you have done, they’l begin; and about it goes to invest you with the honour and name, in a full bowl to the Father of the Family; Well is not that a noble title; such a Pleasure alone is worth a thousand pounds at lest.

And whilest the Men are busie this way; the good woman with the other Women are contriving on the other side how the Child ought to be put in Cloaths upon the best and modishest manner:  For she is resolved to morrow morning to be Church’d, & in the afternoon she’l go to market.