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Yet these are they, the fickle farmer fixes his fancy upon; a bundle of clouts, a skeleton of bones; Maggy and the mutch, like twa fir-sticks an’ a pickle tow, neither for his palate nor his pow; very unproper plenishing, neither for his profit nor her pleasure, to plout her hands thro’ Hawkey’s caff-cog, is a hateful hardship for Mammy’s pet, and will hack a’ her hands. All this I have seen and heard, and been witness to, but my pen being a goose quill, cannot expose their names nor place of abode, but warns the working men out of their way.
2d I see another sort, who can work and maun work till they be married, and become mistress themselves; but when they get husbands, all their thrift leaves them. Before that, they wrought as for a wager, they span as for a premium, brisked as for a brag scour’d their din skins as a wauker does worsted blankets, kept as mim in the mouth as a Minister’s wife, yet the whole of their toil is the trimming of their rigging, tho’ their hulls be everlastingly in a leaking condition; their backs and their bellies are box’d about with the fins of a big fish, six petticoats a gown and apron, besides a side sark down to the ancle-bones: ah!
