re ot ae 
tinually carrying about her the enviable marks of affluence and 
fuperiority, while the wretched Calogria follows her as a fervant, 
arrayed in fimple homefpun brown, and without the moft diftant 
hope of ever changing her condition. Such a difparity may feem 
intolerable, but * what will not cuftom reconcile? Neither are the 
misfortunes of the family yet at an end—The father and mother, 
with what little is left them, contrive by their induftry to accu- 
mulate a fecond little fortune, and this, if they fhould have a 
third daughter, they are obliged to give to her upon her marriage, 
and the fourth, if there fhould be one, becomes her Calogria; and 
fo on through all the daughters alternately. Whenever the 
daughter is marriageable fhe can by cuftom compel the father 
to procure her a hufband, and the mother, fuch is the power of 
habit, is foolifh enough to join in teazing him into an imme- 
diate compliance, though its confequences muft be equally fatal 
and ruinous to both of them. From hence it happens that 
nothing is more common than to fee the old father and mother 
reduced to the utmoft indigence, and even begging about the ftreets, 
while their unnatural daughters are in affluence; and we ourfelves 
have frequently been fhewn the eldeft daughter parading it through 
the town in the greateft fplendour, while her mother and fifter 
followed her as fervants, and made a melancholy part of her 
attendant train. 
THE 
* To what indeed cannot ufage reconcile us? Perhaps if it were the general 
cuftom of the world that in all families children fhould fhare alike, we fhould be as 
much furprifed at the fingularity of any particular country where the rights of 
primogeniture prevailed, as we now are at the Metelinean cuftom, and fhould 
pity the comparative indigence of the fecond brother as we do the fituation of 
the miferable Calogria. 
