thereby to purchase for you a life of idleness or profuseness.

1. I will have you learn to read well, but that reading must be employed in the Scriptures and good books, not in play books, romances, or love books.

2. I will have you learn the use of the needle, but especially and principally for those works that are most useful; and if at any time you learn other more curious parts of needle-work, it is but to keep you employed, and out of harm's way, not in excessively chargeable works.

3. I would have you learn all points of good housewifery, and practise it as there shall be occasion; as spinning of linen, the ordering of dairys, and to see to the dressing of meal, salting and dressing of meat, brewing and baking, and to understand the common prices of corn, meat, malt, wool, butter, cheese, and all other household provisions; and to see and know what stores of all things necessary for the house are in readiness; what and when more are to be provided; to have the prices of linen, cloth, stuffs, and woollen cloth for your necessary use, and the use of a family, to cast about to provide all things at the best hand, to take and keep account of all things, to know the condition of your poultry

about the house, for it is no discredit to a woman to be a hen housewife; to cast about how to order your clothes with the most frugality, to mend them where they want, and to buy but when it is necessary, and with ready money; to love to keep at home. These and the like household employments will, 1. keep you out of idleness; 2. it will make you understand how to govern, and order, and provide for a family; 3. it will make you good wives and better portions to your husbands than the money you bring, if it were double to what I intend you, for you will be builders up of a house and family, not destroyers of it; 4. it will make you good examples to others, and be thereby a means to take off the reproach that justly enough lies upon the generality of English gentlewomen, that they are the ruin of families; and if they bring great portions, they make haste to spend them, and think they have a privilege so to do. A good wife is a portion of herself; but an idle or expensive wife is most times an ill bargain, though she bring a great portion.

CHAPTER XVII.

Concerning Company, and the Choice of it.

THERE is a certain magic or charm in company, for it will assimilate, and make you like to them by much conversation with them, if they be good company, it is a great means to make you good, or eonfirm you in goodness; but if they be bad, it is twenty to one but they will infect and corrupt you; and therefore you must have a special care in the choice of your company, especially when you come abroad in the world to Oxford, or the inns of court; for you must know that when a young gentleman or gentlewoman (especially if he or she have any estate or fortune) comes abroad in the world, especially to the inns of court, or Oxford, there are a sort of beasts of prey that lie in wait for them, as wolves and foxes lie in wait for young lambs, namely, a sort of necessitous and indigent sharks, gamesters, drinkers, and debauched persons; and these will attack you under forty disguises, (if you be not aware of them)

and will confound you; and therefore I must needs again and again give you warning hereof; for these are a sort of harpies and ravens, that pursue your very life, or at least your estates and reputations, and yet many times under pretence of love and kindness.

1. Therefore be very wary and shy in choosing, and entertaining, or frequenting any company or companions; be not too hasty in committing yourself to them: stand off a while till you have enquired of some (that you know by experience to be faithful,) what they are. Observe what company they keep. Be not too easy to gain acquaintance, but stand off and keep a distance yet awhile till you have observed and learnt more touching them. Men or women that are greedy of acquaintance, or hasty in it, are oftentimes snared in ill company before they are aware, and entangled so that they cannot easily get loose from it after when they would.

When you are sent to Oxford, you will be put under a tutor that is able to advise you. The first thing I shall do with you, if I live to send you to the inns of court, is to enquire and find out some person, with whose acquaintance I dare trust you; a man of discretion, fidelity, and prudence. Before you entertain any new acquaint

M

ance in the university, advise with your tutor, whether he thinks him fit for you; and the like you are to do, with that person that I shall commend you to, when you come to the inns of court; for they having more experience, and more opportunity to satisfy themselves therein, than you can have, will be able better to advise you in the choice of your company than you can yourselves,

2. Do not choose for your friends and familiar acquaintance those that are of an estate or quality too much above your's. The inconveniences thereof are these: 1. You will hereby accustom yourselves to live after their rate in clothes, in habit, and in expenses, whereby you will learn a fashion and rank of life above your degree and estate, which will in the end be your undoing, or, 2. If you live not up to their rate of clothes, diet, or expense, you shall be despised both by them and others; so that which way soever you take, you shall be a fool, or be esteemed so, by all that observe you. Therefore give all persons of higher rank or greater estate than yourselves, all due respect; but make not choice of such for your intimate acquaintance, or daily companions.

3. On the other side, concert not with beggarly, base, or necessitous companions; for