第48章 TWO OLD LADIES.(1)

From my own Apartment,December 20,1710.

It would be a good appendix to "The Art of Living and Dying"if any one would write "The Art of growing Old,"and teach men to resign their pretensions to the pleasures and gallantries of youth in proportion to the alteration they find in themselves by the approach of age and infirmities.The infirmities of this stage of life would be much fewer if we did not affect those which attend the more vigorous and active part of our days;but instead of studying to be wiser,or being contented with our present follies,the ambition of many of us is also to be the same sort of fools we formerly have been.I have often argued,as I am a professed lover of women,that our sex grows old with a much worse grace than the other does;and have ever been of opinion that there are more well-pleased old women than old men.I thought it a good reason for this,that the ambition of the fair sex being confined to advantageous marriages,or shining in the eyes of men,their parts were over sooner,and consequently the errors in the performance of them.The conversation of this evening has not convinced me of the contrary;for one or two fop-women shall not make a balance for the crowd of coxcombs among ourselves,diversified according to the different pursuits of pleasure and business.

Returning home this evening,a little before my usual hour,I scarce had seated myself in my easy-chair,stirred the fire,and stroked my cat,but I heard somebody come rumbling upstairs.I saw my door opened,and a human figure advancing towards me so fantastically put together that it was some minutes before I discovered it to be my old and intimate friend Sam Trusty.Immediately I rose up,and placed him in my own seat;a compliment I pay to few.The first thing he uttered was,"Isaac,fetch me a cup of your cherry brandy before you offer to ask any question."He drank a lusty draught,sat silent for some time,and at last broke out:"I am come,"quoth he,"to insult thee for an old fantastic dotard,as thou art,in ever defending the women.I have this evening visited two widows,who are now in that state I have often heard you call an after-life;I suppose you mean by it an existence which grows out of past entertainments,and is an untimely delight in the satisfactions which they once set their hearts upon too much to be ever able to relinquish.Have but patience,"continued he,"till I give you a succinct account of my ladies and of this night's adventure.They are much of an age,but very different in their characters.The one of them,with all the advances which years have made upon her,goes on in a certain romantic road of love and friendship,which she fell into in her teens;the other has transferred the amorous passions of her first years to the love of cronies,pets,and favourites,with which she is always surrounded;but the genius of each of them will best appear by the account of what happened to me at their houses.