The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

As for me, my business was his money, and what I could make of him; and

after that, if I could have found out any way to have done it, I would

have sent him safe home to his house and to his family, for 'twas ten

to one but he had an honest, virtuous wife and innocent children, that

were anxious for his safety, and would have been glad to have gotten

him home, and have taken care of him till he was restored to himself.

And then with what shame and regret would he look back upon himself!

how would he reproach himself with associating himself with a whore!

picked up in the worst of all holes, the cloister, among the dirt and

filth of all the town! how would he be trembling for fear he had got

the pox, for fear a dart had struck through his liver, and hate himself

every time he looked back upon the madness and brutality of his

debauch! how would he, if he had any principles of honour, as I verily

believe he had--I say, how would he abhor the thought of giving any ill

distemper, if he had it, as for aught he knew he might, to his modest

and virtuous wife, and thereby sowing the contagion in the life-blood

of his posterity.

Would such gentlemen but consider the contemptible thoughts which the

very women they are concerned with, in such cases as these, have of

them, it would be a surfeit to them. As I said above, they value not

the pleasure, they are raised by no inclination to the man, the passive

jade thinks of no pleasure but the money; and when he is, as it were,

drunk in the ecstasies of his wicked pleasure, her hands are in his

pockets searching for what she can find there, and of which he can no

more be sensible in the moment of his folly that he can forethink of it

when he goes about it.

I knew a woman that was so dexterous with a fellow, who indeed deserved

no better usage, that while he was busy with her another way, conveyed

his purse with twenty guineas in it out of his fob-pocket, where he had

put it for fear of her, and put another purse with gilded counters in

it into the room of it. After he had done, he says to her, 'Now han't

you picked my pocket?' She jested with him, and told him she supposed

he had not much to lose; he put his hand to his fob, and with his

fingers felt that his purse was there, which fully satisfied him, and

so she brought off his money. And this was a trade with her; she kept

a sham gold watch, that is, a watch of silver gilt, and a purse of

counters in her pocket to be ready on all such occasions, and I doubt

not practiced it with success.