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FAIR FOR DISPOSING OF WOMEN. No. 511.

DEAR SPEC,

FINDING that my last letter took, I do intend to continue my epistolary correfpondence with thee, on those dear confounded creatures, Women. Thou knowest, all the little learning I am master of is upon that subject; I never looked in a book, but for their sakes. I have lately met with two pure stories for a Spectator, which I am sure will please mightily, if they pass through thy hands. The first of them I found by chance in an English book, called Herodotus, that lay in my friend Dapperwit's window, as I visited him one morning. It luckily opened in the place where I met with the following account. He tells us that it was the manner among the Persians to have several fairs in the kingdom, at which all the young unmarried women were annually exposed to sale. The men who wanted wives came hither to provide themselves. Every woman was given to the highest bidder, and the money which she fetched laid aside for the public use, to be employed as thou shalt hear by and by. By this means the richest people had the choice of the market, and culled out all the most extraordinary beauties. As soon as the fair was thus picked, the refuse was to be distributed among the poor and among those who could not go to the price. of a beauty. Several of these married the agreeables, without paying a farthing for them, unless somebody chanced to think it worth his while to bid for them, in which case the best bidder was always the purchaser. But now you must know, Spec, it happened in Persia as it does in our country, that there were as many ugly women as beauties or agreeables; so that by consequence, after the magistrates

VOL. II.

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had

had put off a great many, there were still a great many that stuck upon their hands. In order therefore to clear the market, the money which the beauties had sold for was disposed of among the ugly; so that a poor man, who could not afford to have a beauty for his wife, was forced to take up with a fortune; the greatest portion being always given to the most deformed. To this the author adds, that every poor man was forced to live kindly with his wife, or in case he repented of his bargain, to return her portion with her to the next public sale.

"What I would recommend to thee on this occasion is, to establish such an imaginary fair in Great Britain: thou couldst make it very pleasant, by matching women of quality with cobblers and carmen, or describing titles and garters leading off in great ceremony shop-keepers and farmers daughters. Though to tell thee the truth, I am confoundedly afraid, that as the love of money prevails in our island more than it did in Persia, we should find that some of our greatest men would choose out the portions, and rival one another for the richest piece of deformity; and that, on the contrary, the toasts and belles would be bought up by the extravagant heirs, gamesters, and spendthrifts. Thou couldst make very pretty reflections upon this occasion in honour of the Persian politics, who took care, by such marriages, to beautify the upper part of the species, and to make the greatest persons in the government the most graceful. But this I shall leave to thy judicious pen.

'I have another story to tell thee, which I likewise met with in a book. It seems the general of the Tartars, after having laid siege to a strong town in China, and taken it by storm, would set to sale all the women

that

that were found in it. Accordingly, he put each of them into a sack, and after having thoroughly considered the value of the woman who was inclosed, marked the price that was demanded for her upon the sack. There were a great confluence of chapmen, that resorted from every part, with a design to purchase; which they were to do unsight unseen. The book mentions a merchant, in particular, who observing one of the sackst to be marked pretty high, bargained for it, and carried' it off with him to his house. As he was resting with it upon a halfway bridge, he was resolved to take a survey of his purchase: upon opening the sack, a little old woman popped her head out of it; at which the adventurer was in so great a rage, that he was going to shoot her out into the river. The old lady, however, begged him first of all to hear her story, by which he learned that she was sister to a great mandarin, who would infallibly make the fortune of his brother-in-law as soon as he should know to whose lot she fell. Upon which the merchant again tied her up in his sack, and carried her to his house, where she proved an excellent wife, and procured him all the riches from her brother that she had promised him.

'I fancy, if I was disposed to dream a second time, I could make a tolerable vision upon this plan. I would suppose all the unmarried women in London and Westminster brought to market in sacks, with their respective prices on each sack. The first sack that is sold is marked with five thousand pounds. Upon the opening of it, I find it filled with an admirable housewife, of an agreeable countenance. The purchaser, upon hearing her good qualities, pays down her price very cheerfully. The second I would open, should be a five hundred pounds sack. The lady in it, to our

surprise,

As we

Surprise, has the face and person of a toast. are wondering how she came to be set at so low a price, we hear that she would have been valued at ten thousand pounds, but that the public had made those abatements for her being a scold. I would afterwards find some beautiful, modest, and discreet woman, that should be the top of the market: and perhaps discover half a dozen romps tied up together in the same sack, at one hundred pounds a head. The prude, and the coquette, should be valued at the same price, though the first should go off the better of the two. I fancy thou wouldst like such a vision, had I time to finish it; because, to talk in thy own way, there is a moral in it. Whatever thou mayest think of it, prythee do not make any of thy queer apologies for this letter, as thou didst for my last. The women love a gay lively fellow, and are never angry at the railleries of one who is their known admirer. I am always bitter upon them, but well with them.

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THE oblique manner of giving advice is so inoffensive, that if we look into ancient histories, we find the wise men of old very often chose to give counsel to their kings in fables. There is a pretty instance of this nature in a Turkish tale, which I do not like the worse for that little oriental extravagance which is mixed with it.

We are told that the sultan Mahmoud, by his perpetual wars abroad, and his tyranny at home, had

filled his dominions with ruin and desolation, and half
unpeopled the Persian empire. The visier to this
great sultan (whether an humourist or an enthusiast,
we are not informed) pretended to have learned of a
certain dervise to understand the language of birds, so
that there was not a bird that could open his mouth,
but the visier knew what it was he said. As he was
one evening with the emperor, in their return from
hunting, they saw a couple of owls upon a tree that
grew near an old wall, out of a heap of rubbish. 'I
would fain know,' says the sultan, what those two
owls are saying to one another; listen to their dis-
course, and give me an account of it.'
The visier ap-
proached the tree, pretending to be very attentive to the
two owls. Upon his return to the sultan, 'Sir,' says
he; I have heard part of their conversation, but dare
not tell you what it is.' The sultan would not be
satisfied with such an answer, but forced him to repeat
word for word every thing the owls had said. You
must know then,' said the visier, that one of these
owls has a son, and the other a daughter, between
whom they are now upon a treaty of marriage. The
father of the son said to the father of the daughter, in
my hearing, Brother, I consent to this marriage, pro-
vided you will settle upon your daughter fifty ruined
villages for her portion. To which, the father of the
daughter replied, Instead of fifty, I will give her five
hundred, if you please. God grant a long life to sultan
Mahmoud; whilst he reigns over us, we shall never
want ruined villages.'

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The story says, the sultan was so touched with the fable, that he rebuilt the towns and villages which had been destroyed, and from that time forward consulted the good of his people.

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Wating

ADDISON.

Library,

YORKVILLE BRANCH

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