terest enough in her to prevail for what is so just, and so much her duty. It is my affliction, I did not think she would have stood out so long.

I know her. 1 Futh. I do not expect it of you, son. wish you could prevail with her upon some other accounts. She manages herself very strangely, as I hear.

Son. I hope time may show her the mistakes she commits. They are not of any great consequence. She will be wiser, Sir, with a little more experience.

Fath. But, in the mean time, she ruins her reputation, and may ruin your estate; for she goes so much abroad, she is very seldom at home; and, more than that, I hear she plays.

Son. I have no doubt at all of her virtue, though she may err in her prudence, sir; and that makes me say, I hope a little time will rectify it all. As to play, she does not play high.

Fath. Why, son, I heard she lost 50l. at Sir Anthony's a few nights ago. I wonder you would let her go there; I forbade her that house when she was a maid; nay, her brother (give him his due) blamed her for going there. He is the most rakish fellow in the town; and his sisters, whom she used to visit, are no better than they should be. 1 would have you, for her sake as well as your own, to persuade her against it.

Son. Alas, Sir, she is not to be persuaded by me to things of less consequence than that!

Fath. Then you must restrain her.

Son. That is a task I am no way qualified for, any farther than the violence of intreaties and persuasions will have any effect.

Fath. Why then a wife may ruin herself, and you too; I thought you had been fitter to make a husband than that comes to; why, it is not ill using a wife, it is to love her, to restrain her from ruining her own reputation, and your estate, Do you think I would persuade you to use her ill? Though she has not behaved well to me, she is my

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beloved daughter: nay, I I would not have my scores

at be required of a husband, I am ... and as to ruining me, indeed, if my I may be ruined; for I can never frame se any violence or restraint with her. Beper is such she would set all the house in a expose herself to all the world.

Pray, what said she to you for losing 501. at play? you paid it for her.

S. No, Sir, I would not dishonour her so much. I

e it her immediately to pay for herself. She said, of er own accord, she was in the wrong, and she would play no more. I wish she would lose 5001. though I paid it this very night, so she might but be prevailed with to leave it off.

Fath. I hear she behaves very ill to you at home too.

Son. No, no, Sir, I do not complain of her: she would be a very good wife to me, Sir, if I could persuade her to leave off keeping company with two or three families; and I hope in time she will be tired of them.

Fath. I cannot but be glad that I fairly told you all I feared of her, before you had her; you have nothing to blame me for.

Son. Sir, I blame nobody; she is a very good wife.

Fath. Well, you are kind- to her, but I blame her extremely; and it is a grief to me that any one out of my family should behave so. I am sensible how obliging you have carried it to her, and do still, and how tenderly you use her; and I wanted an occasion to tell you, that though she has not grace to make you a suitable return for it, I shall never forget it, nor I hope forget to reward it.

Son. Sir, you lay too much stress upon what is nothing but my duty, and what she very well deserves; for to give her her due, when she is not prejudiced by her passions, which are hasty, and which hurry her too violently after the

gaieties of the town, and the company which she is fond of, she is of the most engaging temper in the world; 'and no man that has any sense or affection, can be unkind to her. I may have faults on my side, and I should think it hard she would not bear with them; and I see nothing in her but I can bear with, and wait patiently for the return of her temper. Nothing afflicts me so much in her, as to see her so entirely empty of any thing that is religious, that she will hardly bear with our family orders, and the common worship of God: but as that must be wrought by the immediate hand of God, I hope still it will come in his due time, She wants no sense of things, nor knowledge of what is our natural duty, either to God, or one another.

Fath. Well, son, you have more hopes of her than I have, I assure you. I cannot but say, if any thing on earth can bring her to a sense of her duty, either to God or man, it must be such a winning obliging carriage as she receives from you. If you will not work on her, she must be the most ungrateful creature on earth, considering in what circumstances you took her, and that you have had her three years without having had a penny with her.

Son. Sir, as I told you before I married her, I would never ask any thing of you on that account, till I had, if possible, brought her and you to be reconciled; so I have been as good as my word; I am sure she has suffered no inconvenience on that account.

Fath. But I shall not be so unjust to you as to let you suffer on that account; and, therefore, though I cannot receive her as a daughter, yet I shall always value you and treat you as a son, nay as my own son: and though for her I would not disburse a shilling, yet I am resolved, and have wanted an opportunity to tell you that I will give you, for your own sake, not for her's, as much as I would have given her if she had never disobliged me; and if you are willing to have it settled on either, or both children, I will do it when you please.

Son. It is more, Sir, than I can ask, and therefore it shall

be settled as you shall think fit. I hope my wife will think herself obliged to thank you, Sir, as well as I.

Fath. I do not expect or regard her thanks, whilst she stands out against her duty. The submission I have insisted upon, is no ceremony; I demand it not in respect to myself, but as a debt due to the world, in acknowledgment of her duty to God and her parents: and as I had never withheld her portion, but in expectation, that, some time or other, she would have complied, and have come to herself; so I will make no advantage of the delay, but you shall have the interest of it from the day of her marriage: and as I say this is done to oblige you, and as an acknowledgment of your extraordinary behaviour to my daughter; so you shall not take it ill, that I desire her to take notice, I will not now accept of her submission, or be any wise concerned with her, or for her, upon any account whatsoever.

Son. Sir, as the goodness you are pleased to express to me, is more than I have merit to balance, or reason to expect, so I beg you would not let your kindness to me be clogged with any further severity to my wife; for since our good or evil being in this world is inseparable, this would be laying a heavy load on me, at the same time that you are obliging me in the highest manner possible: nay, this would be an unspeakable grief to me, since all the prospect of happiness I have in this world consists in the hopes 【 have of one day making up this wretched breach, to the comfort and satisfaction of us all.

Fath. Well, however, you may deliver this as a message to your wife from me; only noting, for your own private satisfaction, that I do not make this with the same unalterable resolution as I have the other.

Son. Then, Sir, I intreat you, let not me be the messenger of any thing to my wife that I know will grieve

her.

Fath. If the absence from her father had been any grief to her, she would not have borne it out so long; I cannot suppose it any grief to her.

Son. But, Sir, I have many reasons to believe it is a grief to her; and many more to hope, that it will be much more a grief to her than it is, when God shall be pleased to show her both the sin of what is past, and what is her duty for time to come; which time I earnestly pray for, and not without hope; and, Sir, as I shall always make it my endeavour to convince her, how much it is her duty to acknowledge her offence both to God and her father, and humbly to ask pardon of both. I beg you would not put a silencing argument in her mouth to answer my intreaties and persuasions with, by saying to me, do not you know, it is too late? and has not my father said, if I do not submit myself to him now, he will not accept me? If God should say so at the same time, Sir, she would be undone; and the having you say on the one hand, may tempt her to despair of God's mercy on the other, and so make that conviction, which I hope shall be her mercy, whenever it comes, be her

ruin.

[The father embraces him.]

Fath. Dear son, you are fitter to be a father than I am; I am fully answered by your arguments; nothing can be more engaging than the affection you discover for a wife, that I doubt never deserved it from you, and I believe never will: 1 will forbear the message; say to her then whatever you will, and whatever God shall direct you, in order to bring her to her duty. You give me some hopes that God will yet be merciful to her, in that he has fixed

such a concern for her good, in one so capable of being a prevailing instrument with her. I pray God bless your counsel to her good.

[They part, and the young gentleman goes home to his wife.]

His wife had impatiently waited for his return; her passion was entirely over, and her affection to her husband acting now as violently the other way. She had afflicted herself exceedingly at his not coming home; in so much that her grief put her very much out of order, and she had