J O S T A M O N

"… But when I come home, hoping for a further degree of peace and quiet, I find my wife upon her bed in a horrible rage afresh, calling me all the bitter names, and, rising, did fall to revile me in the bitterest manner in the world, and could not refrain to strike me and pull my hair, which I resolved to bear with, and had good reason to bear it. So I by silence and weeping did prevail with her a little to be quiet, and she would not eat her dinner without me; but yet by and by into a raging fit she fell again, worse than before, that she would slit the girl’s nose, and at last W. Hewer come in and come up, who did allay her fury, I flinging myself, in a sad desperate condition, upon the bed in the blue room, and there lay while they spoke together; and at last it come to this, that if I would call Deb. whore under my hand and write to her that I hated her, and would never see her more, she would believe me and trust in me, which I did agree to, only as to the name of whore I would have excused, and therefore wrote to her sparing that word, which my wife thereupon tore it, and would not be satisfied till, W. Hewer winking upon me, I did write so with the name of a whore as that I did fear she might too probably have been prevailed upon to have been a whore by her carriage to me, and therefore as such I did resolve never to see her more. This pleased my wife, and she gives it W. Hewer to carry to her with a sharp message from her. So from that minute my wife begun to be kind to me, and we to kiss and be friends, and so continued all the evening, and fell to talk of other matters, with great comfort, and after supper to bed."