The barks which
navigate it are seventy and eighty feet long, and seventeen or eighteen
feet wide. They are drawn by one horse, and worked by two hands, one of
which is generally a woman. The locks are mostly kept by women, but the
necessary operations are much too laborious for them. The encroachments
by the men, on the offices proper for the women, is a great derangement
in the order of things. Men are shoemakers, tailors, upholsterers,
staymakers, mantua-makers, cooks, housekeepers, house-cleaners,
bed-makers, they _coiffe_ the ladies, and bring them to bed: the women,
therefore, to live, are obliged to undertake the offices which they
abandon. They become porters, carters, reapers, sailors, lock-keepers,
smiters on the anvil, cultivators of the earth, &c. Can we wonder, if
such of them as have a little beauty, prefer easier courses to get their
livelihood, as long as that beauty lasts? Ladies who employ men in the
offices which should be reserved for their sex, are they not bawds in
effect? For every man whom they thus emply, some girl, whose place he
has thus taken, is driven to whoredom.
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