The Boudoir No. 3

CHOICE LETTER FROM THE GREEK OF ARISTENETUS

Philomatia to Eumusus This comes to let you know that we are not so bewitched to music as you imagine, and that the best lute and guitar in the world will make but little progress unless it comes attended with the more powerful harmony of money.

Why then do you give yourself and me the unnecessary trouble of so many serenades? Why must you employ your hands to show the passion of your heart? Why do you persecute me with your sonnets, and sing under my windows?

You are old enough, one would think, to know that money atones for all defects with us women, and that beauty and vigour have no merit with us, if they have no gold to recommend them. But you think me an easy, foolish, good-natured creature, who am to be imposed upon by any wheedling stories. You fancied, I suppose, that I never had been initiated into the mysteries of our profession, and that I would immediately surrender to you, upon the first stroke of your violin, and the first touch of your lute; but to undeceive you, know that I was bred up under the most experienced mistress of her time, who formed my tender mind with wholesome precepts, telling me that nothing under the sun was sincere or desirable but money, and teaching me to despise everything but that. Under her instructions, and by her virtuous example, I have profited so much, that I now measure love, not by vain empty compliments, that signify nothing, but by the presents that are made me, and by the almighty rhetoric of gold, which will stand my friend, when a thousand such fluttering weathercocks as you have left me in the lurch.