102. But, who is to tell whether a girl will make an industrious woman? How is the purblind lover especially, to be able to ascertain whether she, whose smiles and dimples and bewitching lips have half bereft him of his senses; how is he to be able to judge, from any thing that he can see, whether the beloved object will be industrious or lazy? Why, it is very difficult: it is a matter that reason has very little to do with; but there are, nevertheless, certain outward and visible signs, from which a man, not wholly deprived of the use of his reason, may form a pretty accurate judgment as to this matter. It was a story in Philadelphia, some years ago, that a young man, who was courting one of three sisters, happened to be on a visit to her, when all the three were present, and when one said to the others, 'I wonder where our needle is.' Upon which he withdrew, as soon as was consistent with the rules of politeness, resolved never to think more of a girl who possessed a needle only in partnership, and who, it appeared, was not too well informed as to the place where even that share was deposited.

103. This was, to be sure, a very flagrant instance of a want of industry; for, if the third part of the use of a needle satisfied her when single, it was reasonable to anticipate that marriage would banish that useful implement altogether. But such instances are seldom suffered to come in contact with the eyes and ears of the lover, to disguise all defects from whom is the great business, not only of the girl herself, but of her whole family. There are, however, certain outward signs, which, if attended to with care, will serve as pretty sure guides. And, first, if you find the tongue lazy, you may be nearly certain that the hands and feet are the same. By laziness of the tongue I do not mean silence; I do not mean an absence of talk, for that is, in most cases, very good; but, I mean, a slow and soft utterance; a sort of sighing out of the words instead of speaking them; a sort of letting the sounds fall out, as if the party were sick at stomach. The pronunciation of an industrious person is generally quick, distinct, and the voice, if not strong, firm at the least. Not masculine; as feminine as possible; not a croak nor a bawl, but a quick, distinct, and sound voice. Nothing is much more disgusting than what the sensible country people call a maw-mouthed woman. A maw-mouthed man is bad enough: he is sure to be a lazy fellow: but, a woman of this description, in addition to her laziness, soon becomes the most disgusting of mates. In this whole world nothing is much more hateful than a female's under jaw, lazily moving up and down, and letting out a long string of half-articulate sounds. It is impossible for any man, who has any spirit in him, to love such a woman for any length of time.

104. Look a little, also, at the labours of the teeth, for these correspond with those of the other members of the body, and with the operations of the mind. 'Quick at meals, quick at work,' is a saying as old as the hills, in this, the most industrious nation upon earth; and never was there a truer saying. But fashion comes in here, and decides that you shall not be quick at meals; that you shall sit and be carrying on the affair of eating for an hour, or more. Good God! what have I not suffered on this account! However, though she must sit as long as the rest, and though she must join in the performance (for it is a real performance) unto the end of the last scene, she cannot make her teeth abandon their character. She may, and must, suffer the slice to linger on the plate, and must make the supply slow, in order to fill up the time; but when she does bite, she cannot well disguise what nature has taught her to do; and you may be assured, that if her jaws move in slow time, and if she rather squeeze than bite the food; if she so deal with it as to leave you in doubt as to whether she mean finally to admit or reject it; if she deal with it thus, set her down as being, in her very nature, incorrigibly lazy. Never mind the pieces of needle-work, the tambouring, the maps of the world made by her needle. Get to see her at work upon a mutton chop, or a bit of bread and cheese; and, if she deal quickly with these, you have a pretty good security for that activity, that stirring industry, without which a wife is a burden instead of being a help. And, as to love, it cannot live for more than a month or two (in the breast of a man of spirit) towards a lazy woman.

105. Another mark of industry is, a quick step, and a somewhat heavy tread, showing that the foot comes down with a hearty good will; and if the body lean a little forward, and the eyes keep steadily in the same direction, while the feet are going, so much the better, for these discover earnestness to arrive at the intended point. I do not like, and I never liked, your sauntering, soft-stepping girls, who move as if they were perfectly indifferent as to the result; and, as to the love part of the story, whoever expects ardent and lasting affection from one of these sauntering girls, will, when too late, find his mistake: the character runs the same all the way through; and no man ever yet saw a sauntering girl, who did not, when married, make a mawkish wife, and a cold-hearted mother; cared very little for either by husband or children; and, of course, having no store of those blessings which are the natural resources to apply to in sickness and in old age.

106. Early-rising is another mark of industry; and though, in the higher situations of life, it may be of no importance in a mere pecuniary point of view, it is, even there, of importance in other respects; for it is, I should imagine, pretty difficult to keep love alive towards a woman who never sees the dew, never beholds the rising sun, and who constantly comes directly from a reeking bed to the breakfast table, and there chews about, without appetite, the choicest morsels of human food. A man might, perhaps, endure this for a month or two, without being disgusted; but that is ample allowance of time. And, as to people in the middle rank of life, where a living and a provision for children is to be sought by labour of some sort or other, late rising in the wife is certain ruin; and, never was there yet an early-rising wife, who had been a late-rising girl. If brought up to late rising, she will like it; it will be her habit; she will, when married, never want excuses for indulging in the habit; at first she will be indulged without bounds; to make a change afterwards will be difficult; it will be deemed a wrong done to her; she will ascribe it to diminished affection; a quarrel must ensue, or, the husband must submit to be ruined, or, at the very least, to see half the fruit of his labour snored and lounged away. And, is this being rigid? Is it being harsh; is it being hard upon women? Is it the offspring of the frigid severity of age? It is none of these: it arises from an ardent desire to promote the happiness, and to add to the natural, legitimate, and salutary influence, of the female sex. The tendency of this advice is to promote the preservation of their health; to prolong the duration of their beauty; to cause them to be beloved to the last day of their lives; and to give them, during the whole of those lives, weight and consequence, of which laziness would render them wholly unworthy.

107. FRUGALITY. This means the contrary of extravagance. It does not mean stinginess; it does not mean a pinching of the belly, nor a stripping of the back; but it means an abstaining from all unnecessary expenditure, and all unnecessary use, of goods of any and of every sort; and a quality of great importance it is, whether the rank in life be high or low. Some people are, indeed, so rich, they have such an overabundance of money and goods, that how to get rid of them would, to a looker-on, seem to be their only difficulty. But while the inconvenience of even these immense masses is not too great to be overcome by a really extravagant woman, who jumps with joy at a basket of strawberries at a guinea an ounce, and who would not give a straw for green peas later in the year than January; while such a dame would lighten the bags of a loan-monger, or shorten the rent-roll of half-a-dozen peerages amalgamated into one possession, she would, with very little study and application of her talent, send a nobleman of ordinary estate to the poor-house or the pension list, which last may be justly regarded as the poor-book of the aristocracy. How many noblemen and gentlemen, of fine estates, have been ruined and degraded by the extravagance of their wives! More frequently by their own extravagance, perhaps; but, in numerous instances, by that of those whose duty it is to assist in upholding their stations by husbanding their fortunes.

108. If this be the case amongst the opulent, who have estates to draw upon, what must be the consequences of a want of frugality in the middle and lower ranks of life? Here it must be fatal, and especially amongst that description of persons whose wives have, in many cases, the receiving as well as the expending of money. In such a case, there wants nothing but extravagance in the wife to make ruin as sure as the arrival of old age. To obtain security against this is very difficult; yet, if the lover be not quite blind, he may easily discover a propensity towards extravagance. The object of his addresses will, nine times out of ten, not be the manager of a house; but she must have her dress, and other little matters under her control. If she be costly in these; if, in these, she step above her rank, or even to the top of it; if she purchase all she is able to purchase, and prefer the showy to the useful, the gay and the fragile to the less sightly and more durable, he may be sure that the disposition will cling to her through life. If he perceive in her a taste for costly food, costly furniture, costly amusements; if he find her love of gratification to be bounded only by her want of means; if he find her full of admiration of the trappings of the rich, and of desire to be able to imitate them, he may be pretty sure that she will not spare his purse, when once she gets her hand into it; and, therefore, if he can bid adieu to her charms, the sooner he does it the better.

109. The outward and visible and vulgar signs of extravagance are rings, broaches, bracelets, buckles, necklaces, diamonds (real or mock), and, in short, all the hard-ware which women put upon their persons. These things may be proper enough in palaces, or in scenes resembling palaces; but, when they make their appearance amongst people in the middle rank of life, where, after all, they only serve to show that poverty in the parties which they wish to disguise; when the nasty, mean, tawdry things make their appearance in this rank of life, they are the sure indications of a disposition that will always be straining at what it can never attain. To marry a girl of this disposition is really self-destruction. You never can have either property or peace. Earn her a horse to ride, she will want a gig: earn the gig, she will want a chariot: get her that, she will long for a coach and four: and, from stage to stage, she will torment you to the end of her or your days; for, still there will be somebody with a finer equipage than you can give her; and, as long as this is the case, you will never have rest. Reason would tell her, that she could never be at the top; that she must stop at some point short of that; and that, therefore, all expenses in the rivalship are so much thrown away. But, reason and broaches and bracelets do not go in company: the girl who has not the sense to perceive that her person is disfigured, and not beautified, by parcels of brass and tin (for they are generally little better) and other hard-ware, stuck about her body; the girl that is so foolish as not to perceive, that, when silks and cottons and cambrics, in their neatest form, have done their best, nothing more is to be done; the girl that cannot perceive this is too great a fool to be trusted with the purse of any man.

110. CLEANLINESS. This is a capital ingredient; for there never yet was, and there never will be, love of long duration, sincere and ardent love, in any man, towards a 'filthy mate.' I mean any man in England, or in those parts of America where the people have descended from the English. I do not say, that there are not men enough, even in England, to live peaceably and even contentedly, with dirty, sluttish women; for, there are some who seem to like the filth well enough. But what I contend for is this: that there never can exist, for any length of time, ardent affection in any man towards a woman who is filthy either in her person, or in her house affairs. Men may be careless as to their own persons; they may, from the nature of their business, or from their want of time to adhere to neatness in dress, be slovenly in their own dress and habits; but, they do not relish this in their wives, who must still have charms; and charms and filth do not go together.

111. It is not dress that the husband wants to be perpetual: it is not finery; but cleanliness in every thing. The French women dress enough, especially when they sally forth. My excellent neighbour, Mr. JOHN TREDWELL, of Long Island, used to say, that the French were 'pigs in the parlour, and peacocks on the promenade;' an alliteration which 'CANNING'S SELF' might have envied! This occasional cleanliness is not the thing that an English or an American husband wants: he wants it always; indoors as well as out; by night as well as by day; on the floor as well as on the table; and, however he may grumble about the 'fuss' and the 'expense' of it, he would grumble more if he had it not. I once saw a picture representing the amusements of Portuguese Lovers; that is to say, three or four young men, dressed in gold or silver laced clothes, each having a young girl, dressed like a princess, and affectionately engaged in hunting down and killing the vermin in his head! This was, perhaps, an exaggeration; but that it should have had the shadow of foundation, was enough to fill me with contempt for the whole nation.

112. The signs of cleanliness are, in the first place, a clean skin. An English girl will hardly let her lover see the stale dirt between her fingers, as I have many times seen it between those of French women, and even ladies, of all ages. An English girl will have her face clean, to be sure, if there be soap and water within her reach; but, get a glance, just a glance, at her poll, if you have any doubt upon the subject; and, if you find there, or behind the ears, what the Yorkshire people call grime, the sooner you cease your visits the better. I hope, now, that no young woman will be offended at this, and think me too severe on her sex. I am only saying, I am only telling the women, that which all men think; and, it is a decided advantage to them to be fully informed of our thoughts on the subject. If any one, who shall read this, find, upon self-examination, that she is defective in this respect, there is plenty of time for correcting the defect.

113. In the dress you can, amongst rich people, find little whereon to form a judgment as to cleanliness, because they have not only the dress prepared for them, but put upon them into the bargain. But, in the middle rank of life, the dress is a good criterion in two respects: first, as to its colour; for, if the white be a sort of yellow, cleanly hands would have been at work to prevent that. A white-yellow cravat, or shirt, on a man, speaks, at once, the character of his wife; and, be you assured, that she will not take with your dress pains which she has never taken with her own. Then, the manner of putting on the dress is no bad foundation for judging. If it be careless, slovenly, if it do not fit properly, no matter for its mean quality: mean as it may be, it may be neatly and trimly put on; and, if it be not, take care of yourself; for, as you will soon find to your cost, a sloven in one thing is a sloven in all things. The country-people judge greatly from the state of the covering of the ancles and, if that be not clean and tight, they conclude, that all out of sight is not what it ought to be. Look at the shoes! If they be trodden on one side, loose on the foot, or run down at the heel, it is a very bad sign; and, as to slip-shod, though at coming down in the morning and even before day-light, make up your mind to a rope, rather than to live with a slip-shod wife.

114. Oh! how much do women lose by inattention to these matters! Men, in general, say nothing about it to their wives; but they think about it; they envy their luckier neighbours; and in numerous cases, consequences the most serious arise from this apparently trifling cause. Beauty is valuable; it is one of the ties, and a strong tie too; that, however, cannot last to old age; but, the charm of cleanliness never ends but with life itself. I dismiss this part of my subject with a quotation from my 'YEAR'S RESIDENCE IN AMERICA,' containing words which I venture to recommend to every young woman to engrave on her heart: 'The sweetest flowers, when they become putrid, stink the most; and a nasty woman is the nastiest thing in nature.'

115. KNOWLEDGE OF DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. Without more or less of this knowledge, a lady, even the wife of a peer, is but a poorish thing. It was the fashion, in former times, for ladies to understand a great deal about these affairs, and it would be very hard to make me believe that this did not tend to promote the interests and honour of their husbands. The affairs of a great family never can be well managed, if left wholly to hirelings; and there are many parts of these affairs in which it would be unseemly for the husband to meddle. Surely, no lady can be too high in rank to make it proper for her to be well acquainted with the characters and general demeanour of all the female servants. To receive and give them characters is too much to be left to a servant, however good, and of service however long. Much of the ease and happiness of the great and rich must depend on the character of those by whom they are served: they live under the same roof with them; they are frequently the children of their tenants, or poorer neighbours; the conduct of their whole lives must be influenced by the examples and precepts which they here imbibe; and when ladies consider how much more weight there must be in one word from them than in ten thousand words from a person who, call her what you like, is still a fellow-servant, it does appear strange that they should forego the performance of this at once important and pleasing part of their duty. It was from the mansions of noblemen and gentlemen, and not from boarding-schools, that farmers and tradesmen formerly took their wives; and though these days are gone, with little chance of returning, there is still something left for ladies to do in checking that torrent of immorality which is now crowding the streets with prostitutes and cramming the jails with thieves.

116. I am, however, addressing myself, in this work, to persons in the middle rank of life; and here a knowledge of domestic affairs is so necessary in every wife, that the lover ought to have it continually in his eye. Not only a knowledge of these affairs; not only to know how things ought to be done, but how to do them; not only to know what ingredients ought to be put into a pie or a pudding, but to be able to make the pie or the pudding. Young people, when they come together, ought not, unless they have fortunes, or are in a great way of business, to think about servants! Servants for what! To help them to eat and drink and sleep? When children come, there must be some help in a farmer's or tradesman's house; but until then, what call for a servant in a house, the master of which has to earn every mouthful that is consumed?

117. I shall, when I come to address myself to the husband, have much more to say upon this subject of keeping servants; but, what the lover, if he be not quite blind, has to look to, is, that his intended wife know how to do the work of a house, unless he have fortune sufficient to keep her like a lady. 'Eating and drinking,' as I observe in COTTAGE ECONOMY, came three times every day; they must come; and, however little we may, in the days of our health and vigour, care about choice food and about cookery, we very soon get tired of heavy or burnt bread and of spoiled joints of meat: we bear them for a time, or for two, perhaps; but, about the third time, we lament inwardly; about the fifth time, it must be an extraordinary honey-moon that will keep us from complaining: if the like continue for a month or two, we begin to repent, and then adieu to all our anticipated delights. We discover, when it is too late, that we have not got a help-mate, but a burden; and, the fire of love being damped, the unfortunately educated creature, whose parents are more to blame than she is, is, unless she resolve to learn her duty, doomed to lead a life very nearly approaching to that of misery; for, however considerate the husband, he never can esteem her as he would have done, had she been skilled and able in domestic affairs.

118. The mere manual performance of domestic labours is not, indeed, absolutely necessary in the female head of the family of professional men, such as lawyers, doctors, and parsons; but, even here, and also in the case of great merchants and of gentlemen living on their fortunes, surely the head of the household ought to be able to give directions as to the purchasing of meat, salting meat, making bread, making preserves of all sorts, and ought to see the things done, or that they be done. She ought to take care that food be well cooked, drink properly prepared and kept; that there be always a sufficient supply; that there be good living without waste; and that, in her department, nothing shall be seen inconsistent with the rank, station, and character of her husband, who, if he have a skilful and industrious wife, will, unless he be of a singularly foolish turn, gladly leave all these things to her absolute dominion, controlled only by the extent of the whole expenditure, of which he must be the best, and, indeed, the sole, judge.

119. But, in a farmer's or a tradesman's family, the manual performance is absolutely necessary, whether there be servants or not. No one knows how to teach another so well as one who has done, and can do, the thing himself. It was said of a famous French commander, that, in attacking an enemy, he did not say to his men 'go on,' but 'come on;' and, whoever have well observed the movements of servants, must know what a prodigious difference there is in the effect of the words, go and come. A very good rule would be, to have nothing to eat, in a farmer's or tradesman's house, that the mistress did not know how to prepare and to cook; no pudding, tart, pie or cake, that she did not know how to make. Never fear the toil to her: exercise is good for health; and without health there is no beauty; a sick beauty may excite pity, but pity is a short-lived passion. Besides, what is the labour in such a case? And how many thousands of ladies, who loll away the day, would give half their fortunes for that sound sleep which the stirring house-wife seldom fails to enjoy.

120. Yet, if a young farmer or tradesman marry a girl, who has been brought up to play music, to what is called draw, to sing, to waste paper, pen and ink, in writing long and half romantic letters, and to see shows, and plays, and read novels; if a young man do marry such an unfortunate young creature, let him bear the consequences with temper; let him be just; and justice will teach him to treat her with great indulgence; to endeavour to cause her to learn her business as a wife; to be patient with her; to reflect that he has taken her, being apprised of her inability; to bear in mind, that he was, or seemed to be, pleased with her showy and useless acquirements; and that, when the gratification of his passion has been accomplished, he is unjust and cruel and unmanly, if he turn round upon her, and accuse her of a want of that knowledge, which he well knew that she did not possess.

121. For my part, I do not know, nor can I form an idea of, a more unfortunate being than a girl with a mere boarding-school education, and without a fortune to enable her to keep a servant, when married. Of what use are her accomplishments? Of what use her music, her drawing, and her romantic epistles? If she be good in her nature, the first little faint cry of her first baby drives all the tunes and all the landscapes and all the Clarissa Harlowes out of her head for ever. I once saw a very striking instance of this sort. It was a climb-over-the-wall match, and I gave the bride away, at St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, the pair being as handsome a pair as ever I saw in my life. Beauty, however, though in double quantity, would not pay the baker and butcher; and, after an absence of little better than a year, I found the husband in prison for debt; but I there found also his wife, with her baby, and she, who had never, before her marriage, known what it was to get water to wash her own hands, and whose talk was all about music, and the like, was now the cheerful sustainer of her husband, and the most affectionate of mothers. All the music and all the drawing, and all the plays and romances were gone to the winds! The husband and baby had fairly supplanted them; and even this prison-scene was a blessing, as it gave her, at this early stage, an opportunity of proving her devotion to her husband, who, though I have not seen him for about fifteen years, he being in a part of America which I could not reach when last there, has, I am sure, amply repaid her for that devotion. They have now a numerous family (not less than twelve children, I believe), and she is, I am told, a most excellent and able mistress of a respectable house.

122. But, this is a rare instance: the husband, like his countrymen in general, was at once brave, humane, gentle, and considerate, and the love was so sincere and ardent, on both sides, that it made losses and sufferings appear as nothing. When I, in a sort of half-whisper, asked Mrs. DICKENS where her piano was, she smiled, and turned her face towards her baby, that was sitting on her knee; as much as to say, 'This little fellow has beaten the piano;' and, if what I am now writing should ever have the honour to be read by her, let it be the bearer of a renewed expression of my admiration of her conduct, and of that regard for her kind and sensible husband, which time and distance have not in the least diminished, and which will be an inmate of my heart until it shall cease to beat.

123. The like of this is, however, not to be expected: no man ought to think that he has even a chance of it: besides, the husband was, in this case, a man of learning and of great natural ability: he has not had to get his bread by farming or trade; and, in all probability, his wife has had the leisure to practise those acquirements which she possessed at the time of her marriage. But, can this be the case with the farmer or the tradesman's wife? She has to help to earn a provision for her children; or, at the least, to help to earn a store for sickness or old age. She, therefore, ought to be qualified to begin, at once, to assist her husband in his earnings: the way in which she can most efficiently assist, is by taking care of his property; by expending his money to the greatest advantage; by wasting nothing; by making the table sufficiently abundant with the least expense. And how is she to do these things, unless she have been brought up to understand domestic affairs? How is she to do these things, if she have been taught to think these matters beneath her study? How is any man to expect her to do these things, if she have been so bred up as to make her habitually look upon them as worthy the attention of none but low and ignorant women?

124. Ignorant, indeed! Ignorance consists in a want of knowledge of those things which your calling or state of life naturally supposes you to understand. A ploughman is not an ignorant man because he does not know how to read: if he knows how to plough, he is not to be called an ignorant man; but, a wife may be justly called an ignorant woman, if she does not know how to provide a dinner for her husband. It is cold comfort for a hungry man, to tell him how delightfully his wife plays and sings: lovers may live on very aerial diet; but husbands stand in need of the solids; and young women may take my word for it, that a constantly clean board, well cooked victuals, a house in order, and a cheerful fire, will do more in preserving a husband's heart, than all the 'accomplishments,' taught in all the 'establishments' in the world.

125. GOOD TEMPER. This is a very difficult thing to ascertain beforehand. Smiles are so cheap; they are so easily put on for the occasion; and, besides, the frowns are, according to the lover's whim, interpreted into the contrary. By 'good temper,' I do not mean easy temper, a serenity which nothing disturbs, for that is a mark of laziness. Sulkiness, if you be not too blind to perceive it, is a temper to be avoided by all means. A sulky man is bad enough; what, then, must be a sulky woman, and that woman a wife; a constant inmate, a companion day and night! Only think of the delight of sitting at the same table, and sleeping in the same bed, for a week, and not exchange a word all the while! Very bad to be scolding for such a length of time; but this is far better than the sulks. If you have your eyes, and look sharp, you will discover symptoms of this, if it unhappily exist. She will, at some time or other, show it towards some one or other of the family; or, perhaps, towards yourself; and you may be quite sure that, in this respect, marriage will not mend her. Sulkiness arises from capricious displeasure, displeasure not founded in reason. The party takes offence unjustifiably; is unable to frame a complaint, and therefore expresses displeasure by silence. The remedy for sulkiness is, to suffer it to take its full swing; but it is better not to have the disease in your house; and to be married to it is little short of madness.

126. Querulousness is a great fault. No man, and, especially, no woman, likes to hear eternal plaintiveness. That she complain, and roundly complain, of your want of punctuality, of your coolness, of your neglect, of your liking the company of others: these are all very well, more especially as they are frequently but too just. But an everlasting complaining, without rhyme or reason, is a bad sign. It shows want of patience, and, indeed, want of sense. But, the contrary of this, a cold indifference, is still worse. 'When will you come again? You can never find time to come here. You like any company better than mine.' These, when groundless, are very teasing, and demonstrate a disposition too full of anxiousness; but, from a girl who always receives you with the same civil smile, lets you, at your own good pleasure, depart with the same; and who, when you take her by the hand, holds her cold fingers as straight as sticks, I say (or should if I were young), God, in his mercy, preserve me!

127. Pertinacity is a very bad thing in anybody, and especially in a young woman; and it is sure to increase in force with the age of the party. To have the last word is a poor triumph; but with some people it is a species of disease of the mind. In a wife it must be extremely troublesome; and, if you find an ounce of it in the maid, it will become a pound in the wife. An eternal disputer is a most disagreeable companion; and where young women thrust their say into conversations carried on by older persons, give their opinions in a positive manner, and court a contest of the tongue, those must be very bold men who will encounter them as wives.

128. Still, of all the faults as to temper, your melancholy ladies have the worst, unless you have the same mental disease. Most wives are, at times, misery-makers; but these carry it on as a regular trade. They are always unhappy about something, either past, present, or to come. Both arms full of children is a pretty efficient remedy in most cases; but, if the ingredients be wanting, a little want, a little real trouble, a little genuine affliction must, if you would effect a cure, be resorted to. But, this is very painful to a man of any feeling; and, therefore, the best way is to avoid a connexion, which is to give you a life of wailing and sighs.

129. BEAUTY. Though I have reserved this to the last of the things to be desired in a wife, I by no means think it the last in point of importance. The less favoured part of the sex say, that 'beauty is but skin-deep;' and this is very true; but, it is very agreeable, though, for all that. Pictures are only paint-deep, or pencil-deep; but we admire them, nevertheless. "Handsome is that handsome does," used to say to me an old man, who had marked me out for his not over handsome daughter. 'Please your eye and plague your heart' is an adage that want of beauty invented, I dare say, more than a thousand years ago. These adages would say, if they had but the courage, that beauty is inconsistent with chastity, with sobriety of conduct, and with all the female virtues. The argument is, that beauty exposes the possessor to greater temptation than women not beautiful are exposed to; and that, therefore, their fall is more probable. Let us see a little how this matter stands.

130. It is certainly true, that pretty girls will have more, and more ardent, admirers than ugly ones; but, as to the temptation when in their unmarried state, there are few so very ugly as to be exposed to no temptation at all; and, which is the most likely to resist; she who has a choice of lovers, or she who if she let the occasion slip may never have it again? Which of the two is most likely to set a high value upon her reputation, she whom all beholders admire, or she who is admired, at best, by mere chance? And as to women in the married state, this argument assumes, that, when they fall, it is from their own vicious disposition; when the fact is, that, if you search the annals of conjugal infidelity, you will find, that, nine times out of ten, the fault is in the husband. It is his neglect, his flagrant disregard, his frosty indifference, his foul example; it is to these that, nine times out of ten, he owes the infidelity of his wife; and, if I were to say ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the facts, if verified, would, I am certain, bear me out. And whence this neglect, this disregard, this frosty indifference; whence this foul example? Because it is easy, in so many cases, to find some woman more beautiful than the wife. This is no justification for the husband to plead; for he has, with his eyes open, made a solemn contract: if he have not beauty enough to please him, he should have sought it in some other woman: if, as is frequently the case, he have preferred rank or money to beauty, he is an unprincipled man, if he do any thing to make her unhappy who has brought him the rank or the money. At any rate, as conjugal infidelity is, in so many cases; as it is generally caused by the want of affection and due attention in the husband, it follows, of course, that it must more frequently happen in the case of ugly than in that of handsome women.

131. In point of dress, nothing need be said to convince any reasonable man, that beautiful women will be less expensive in this respect than women of a contrary description. Experience teaches us, that ugly women are always the most studious about their dress; and, if we had never observed upon the subject, reason would tell us, that it must be so. Few women are handsome without knowing it; and if they know that their features naturally attract admiration, will they desire to draw it off, and to fix it on lace and silks and jewels?

132. As to manners and temper there are certainly some handsome women who are conceited and arrogant; but, as they have all the best reasons in the world for being pleased with themselves, they afford you the best chance of general good humour; and this good humour is a very valuable commodity in the married state. Some that are called handsome, and that are such at the first glance, are dull, inanimate things, that might as well have been made of wax, or of wood. But, the truth is, that this is not beauty, for this is not to be found only in the form of the features, but in the movements of them also. Besides, here nature is very impartial; for she gives animation promiscuously to the handsome as well as to the ugly; and the want of this in the former is surely as bearable as in the latter.

133. But, the great use of female beauty, the great practical advantage of it is, that it naturally and unavoidably tends to keep the husband in good humour with himself, to make him, to use the dealer's phrase, pleased with his bargain. When old age approaches, and the parties have become endeared to each other by a long series of joint cares and interests, and when children have come and bound them together by the strongest ties that nature has in store; at this age the features and the person are of less consequence; but, in the young days of matrimony, when the roving eye of the bachelor is scarcely become steady in the head of the husband, it is dangerous for him to see, every time he stirs out, a face more captivating than that of the person to whom he is bound for life. Beauty is, in some degree, a matter of taste: what one man admires, another does not; and it is fortunate for us that it is thus. But still there are certain things that all men admire; and a husband is always pleased when he perceives that a portion, at least, of these things are in his own possession: he takes this possession as a compliment to himself: there must, he will think the world will believe, have been some merit in him, some charm, seen or unseen, to have caused him to be blessed with the acquisition.

134. And then there arise so many things, sickness, misfortune in business, losses, many many things, wholly unexpected; and, there are so many circumstances, perfectly nameless, to communicate to the new-married man the fact, that it is not a real angel of whom he has got the possession; there are so many things of this sort, so many and such powerful dampers of the passions, and so many incentives to cool reflection; that it requires something, and a good deal too, to keep the husband in countenance in this his altered and enlightened state. The passion of women does not cool so soon: the lamp of their love burns more steadily, and even brightens as it burns: and, there is, the young man may be assured, a vast difference in the effect of the fondness of a pretty woman and that of one of a different description; and, let reason and philosophy say what they will, a man will come down stairs of a morning better pleased after seeing the former, than he would after seeing the latter, in her night-cap.

135. To be sure, when a man has, from whatever inducement, once married a woman, he is unjust and cruel if he even slight her on account of her want of beauty, and, if he treat her harshly, on this account, he is a brute. But, it requires a greater degree of reflection and consideration than falls to the lot of men in general to make them act with justice in such a case; and, therefore, the best way is to guard, if you can, against the temptation to commit such injustice, which is to be done in no other way, than by not marrying any one that you do not think handsome.

136. I must not conclude this address to THE LOVER without something on the subject of seduction and inconstancy. In, perhaps, nineteen cases out of twenty, there is, in the unfortunate cases of illicit gratification, no seduction at all, the passion, the absence of virtue, and the crime, being all mutual. But, there are other cases of a very different description; and where a man goes coolly and deliberately to work, first to gain and rivet the affections of a young girl, then to take advantage of those affections to accomplish that which he knows must be her ruin, and plunge her into misery for life; when a man does this merely for the sake of a momentary gratification, he must be either a selfish and unfeeling brute, unworthy of the name of man, or he must have a heart little inferior, in point of obduracy, to that of the murderer. Let young women, however, be aware; let them be well aware, that few, indeed, are the cases in which this apology can possibly avail them. Their character is not solely theirs, but belongs, in part, to their family and kindred. They may, in the case contemplated, be objects of compassion with the world; but what contrition, what repentance, what remorse, what that even the tenderest benevolence can suggest, is to heal the wounded hearts of humbled, disgraced, but still affectionate, parents, brethren and sisters?

137. As to constancy in Lovers, though I do not approve of the saying, 'At lovers' lies Jove laughs;' yet, when people are young, one object may supplant another in their affections, not only without criminality in the party experiencing the change, but without blame; and it is honest, and even humane, to act upon the change; because it would be both foolish and cruel to marry one girl while you liked another better: and the same holds good with regard to the other sex. Even when marriage has been promised, and that, too, in the most solemn manner, it is better for both parties to break off, than to be coupled together with the reluctant assent of either; and I have always thought, that actions for damages, on this score, if brought by the girl, show a want of delicacy as well as of spirit; and, if brought by the man, excessive meanness. Some damage may, indeed, have been done to the complaining party; but no damage equal to what that party would have sustained from a marriage, to which the other party would have yielded by a sort of compulsion, producing to almost a certainty what Hogarth, in his Marriage a la Mode, most aptly typifies by two curs, of different sexes, fastened together by what sportsmen call couples, pulling different ways, and snarling and barking and foaming like furies.

138. But when promises have been made to a young woman; when they have been relied on for any considerable time; when it is manifest that her peace and happiness, and, perhaps, her life, depend upon their fulfilment; when things have been carried to this length, the change in the Lover ought to be announced in the manner most likely to make the disappointment as supportable as the case will admit of; for, though it is better to break the promise than to marry one while you like another better; though it is better for both parties, you have no right to break the heart of her who has, and that, too, with your accordance, and, indeed, at your instigation, or, at least, by your encouragement, confided it to your fidelity. You cannot help your change of affections; but you can help making the transfer in such a way as to cause the destruction, or even probable destruction, nay, if it were but the deep misery, of her, to gain whose heart you had pledged your own. You ought to proceed by slow degrees; you ought to call time to your aid in executing the painful task; you ought scrupulously to avoid every thing calculated to aggravate the sufferings of the disconsolate party.

139. A striking, a monstrous, instance of conduct the contrary of this has recently been placed upon the melancholy records of the Coroner of Middlesex; which have informed an indignant public, that a young man, having first secured the affections of a virtuous young woman, next promised her marriage, then caused the banns to be published, and then, on the very day appointed for the performance of the ceremony, married another woman, in the same church; and this, too, without, as he avowed, any provocation, and without the smallest intimation or hint of his intention to the disappointed party, who, unable to support existence under a blow so cruel, put an end to that existence by the most deadly and the swiftest poison. If any thing could wipe from our country the stain of having given birth to a monster so barbarous as this, it would be the abhorrence of him which the jury expressed; and which, from every tongue, he ought to hear to the last moment of his life.

140. Nor has a man any right to sport with the affections of a young woman, though he stop short of positive promises. Vanity is generally the tempter in this case; a desire to be regarded as being admired by the women: a very despicable species of vanity, but frequently greatly mischievous, notwithstanding. You do not, indeed, actually, in so many words, promise to marry; but the general tenor of your language and deportment has that meaning; you know that your meaning is so understood; and if you have not such meaning; if you be fixed by some previous engagement with, or greater liking for, another; if you know you are here sowing the seeds of disappointment; and if you, keeping your previous engagement or greater liking a secret, persevere, in spite of the admonitions of conscience, you are guilty of deliberate deception, injustice and cruelty: you make to God an ungrateful return for those endowments which have enabled you to achieve this inglorious and unmanly triumph; and if, as is frequently the case, you glory in such triumph, you may have person, riches, talents to excite envy; but every just and humane man will abhor your heart.

141. There are, however, certain cases in which you deceive, or nearly deceive, yourself; cases in which you are, by degrees and by circumstances, deluded into something very nearly resembling sincere love for a second object, the first still, however, maintaining her ground in your heart; cases in which you are not actuated by vanity, in which you are not guilty of injustice and cruelty; but cases in which you, nevertheless, do wrong: and as I once did a wrong of this sort myself, I will here give a history of it, as a warning to every young man who shall read this little book; that being the best and, indeed, the only atonement, that I can make, or ever could have made, for this only serious sin that I ever committed against the female sex.

142. The Province of New Brunswick, in North America, in which I passed my years from the age of eighteen to that of twenty-six, consists, in general, of heaps of rocks, in the interstices of which grow the pine, the spruce, and various sorts of fir trees, or, where the woods have been burnt down, the bushes of the raspberry or those of the huckleberry. The province is cut asunder lengthwise, by a great river, called the St. John, about two hundred miles in length, and, at half way from the mouth, full a mile wide. Into this main river run innumerable smaller rivers, there called CREEKS. On the sides of these creeks the land is, in places, clear of rocks; it is, in these places, generally good and productive; the trees that grow here are the birch, the maple, and others of the deciduous class; natural meadows here and there present themselves; and some of these spots far surpass in rural beauty any other that my eyes ever beheld; the creeks, abounding towards their sources in water-falls of endless variety, as well in form as in magnitude, and always teeming with fish, while water-fowl enliven their surface, and while wild-pigeons, of the gayest plumage, flutter, in thousands upon thousands, amongst the branches of the beautiful trees, which, sometimes, for miles together, form an arch over the creeks.

143. I, in one of my rambles in the woods, in which I took great delight, came to a spot at a very short distance from the source of one of these creeks. Here was every thing to delight the eye, and especially of one like me, who seem to have been born to love rural life, and trees and plants of all sorts. Here were about two hundred acres of natural meadow, interspersed with patches of maple-trees in various forms and of various extent; the creek (there about thirty miles from its point of joining the St. John) ran down the middle of the spot, which formed a sort of dish, the high and rocky hills rising all round it, except at the outlet of the creek, and these hills crowned with lofty pines: in the hills were the sources of the creek, the waters of which came down in cascades, for any one of which many a nobleman in England would, if he could transfer it, give a good slice of his fertile estate; and in the creek, at the foot of the cascades, there were, in the season, salmon the finest in the world, and so abundant, and so easily taken, as to be used for manuring the land.

144. If nature, in her very best humour, had made a spot for the express purpose of captivating me, she could not have exceeded the efforts which she had here made. But I found something here besides these rude works of nature; I found something in the fashioning of which man had had something to do. I found a large and well-built log dwelling house, standing (in the month of September) on the edge of a very good field of Indian Corn, by the side of which there was a piece of buck-wheat just then mowed. I found a homestead, and some very pretty cows. I found all the things by which an easy and happy farmer is surrounded: and I found still something besides all these; something that was destined to give me a great deal of pleasure and also a great deal of pain, both in their extreme degree; and both of which, in spite of the lapse of forty years, now make an attempt to rush back into my heart.

145. Partly from misinformation, and partly from miscalculation, I had lost my way; and, quite alone, but armed with my sword and a brace of pistols, to defend myself against the bears, I arrived at the log-house in the middle of a moonlight night, the hoar frost covering the trees and the grass. A stout and clamorous dog, kept off by the gleaming of my sword, waked the master of the house, who got up, received me with great hospitality, got me something to eat, and put me into a feather-bed, a thing that I had been a stranger to for some years. I, being very tired, had tried to pass the night in the woods, between the trunks of two large trees, which had fallen side by side, and within a yard of each other. I had made a nest for myself of dry fern, and had made a covering by laying boughs of spruce across the trunks of the trees. But unable to sleep on account of the cold; becoming sick from the great quantity of water that I had drank during the heat of the day, and being, moreover, alarmed at the noise of the bears, and lest one of them should find me in a defenceless state, I had roused myself up, and had crept along as well as I could. So that no hero of eastern romance ever experienced a more enchanting change.

146. I had got into the house of one of those YANKEE LOYALISTS, who, at the close of the revolutionary war (which, until it had succeeded, was called a rebellion) had accepted of grants of land in the King's Province of New Brunswick; and who, to the great honour of England, had been furnished with all the means of making new and comfortable settlements. I was suffered to sleep till breakfast time, when I found a table, the like of which I have since seen so many in the United States, loaded with good things. The master and the mistress of the house, aged about fifty, were like what an English farmer and his wife were half a century ago. There were two sons, tall and stout, who appeared to have come in from work, and the youngest of whom was about my age, then twenty-three. But there was another member of the family, aged nineteen, who (dressed according to the neat and simple fashion of New England, whence she had come with her parents five or six years before) had her long light-brown hair twisted nicely up, and fastened on the top of her head, in which head were a pair of lively blue eyes, associated with features of which that softness and that sweetness, so characteristic of American girls, were the predominant expressions, the whole being set off by a complexion indicative of glowing health, and forming, figure, movements, and all taken together, an assemblage of beauties, far surpassing any that I had ever seen but once in my life. That once was, too, two years agone; and, in such a case and at such an age, two years, two whole years, is a long, long while! It was a space as long as the eleventh part of my then life! Here was the present against the absent: here was the power of the eyes pitted against that of the memory: here were all the senses up in arms to subdue the influence of the thoughts: here was vanity, here was passion, here was the spot of all spots in the world, and here were also the life, and the manners and the habits and the pursuits that I delighted in: here was every thing that imagination can conceive, united in a conspiracy against the poor little brunette in England! What, then, did I fall in love at once with this bouquet of lilies and roses? Oh! by no means. I was, however, so enchanted with the place; I so much enjoyed its tranquillity, the shade of the maple trees, the business of the farm, the sports of the water and of the woods, that I stayed at it to the last possible minute, promising, at my departure, to come again as often as I possibly could; a promise which I most punctually fulfilled.

147. Winter is the great season for jaunting and dancing (called frolicking) in America. In this Province the river and the creeks were the only roads from settlement to settlement. In summer we travelled in canoes; in winter in sleighs on the ice or snow. During more than two years I spent all the time I could with my Yankee friends: they were all fond of me: I talked to them about country affairs, my evident delight in which they took as a compliment to themselves: the father and mother treated me as one of their children; the sons as a brother; and the daughter, who was as modest and as full of sensibility as she was beautiful, in a way to which a chap much less sanguine than I was would have given the tenderest interpretation; which treatment I, especially in the last-mentioned case, most cordially repaid.

148. It is when you meet in company with others of your own age that you are, in love matters, put, most frequently, to the test, and exposed to detection. The next door neighbour might, in that country, be ten miles off. We used to have a frolic, sometimes at one house and sometimes at another. Here, where female eyes are very much on the alert, no secret can long be kept; and very soon father, mother, brothers and the whole neighbourhood looked upon the thing as certain, not excepting herself, to whom I, however, had never once even talked of marriage, and had never even told her that I loved her. But I had a thousand times done these by implication, taking into view the interpretation that she would naturally put upon my looks, appellations and acts; and it was of this, that I had to accuse myself. Yet I was not a deceiver; for my affection for her was very great: I spent no really pleasant hours but with her: I was uneasy if she showed the slightest regard for any other young man: I was unhappy if the smallest matter affected her health or spirits: I quitted her in dejection, and returned to her with eager delight: many a time, when I could get leave but for a day, I paddled in a canoe two whole succeeding nights, in order to pass that day with her. If this was not love, it was first cousin to it; for as to any criminal intention I no more thought of it, in her case, than if she had been my sister. Many times I put to myself the questions: 'What am I at? Is not this wrong? Why do I go?' But still I went.

149. Then, further in my excuse, my prior engagement, though carefully left unalluded to by both parties, was, in that thin population, and owing to the singular circumstances of it, and to the great talk that there always was about me, perfectly well known to her and all her family. It was matter of so much notoriety and conversation in the Province, that GENERAL CARLETON (brother of the late Lord Dorchester), who was the Governor when I was there, when he, about fifteen years afterwards, did me the honour, on his return to England, to come and see me at my house in Duke Street, Westminster, asked, before he went away, to see my wife, of whom he had heard so much before her marriage. So that here was no deception on my part: but still I ought not to have suffered even the most distant hope to be entertained by a person so innocent, so amiable, for whom I had so much affection, and to whose heart I had no right to give a single twinge. I ought, from the very first, to have prevented the possibility of her ever feeling pain on my account. I was young, to be sure; but I was old enough to know what was my duty in this case, and I ought, dismissing my own feelings, to have had the resolution to perform it.

150. The last parting came; and now came my just punishment! The time was known to every body, and was irrevocably fixed; for I had to move with a regiment, and the embarkation of a regiment is an epoch in a thinly settled province. To describe this parting would be too painful even at this distant day, and with this frost of age upon my head. The kind and virtuous father came forty miles to see me just as I was going on board in the river. His looks and words I have never forgotten. As the vessel descended, she passed the mouth of that creek which I had so often entered with delight; and though England, and all that England contained, were before me, I lost sight of this creek with an aching heart.

151. On what trifles turn the great events in the life of man! If I had received a cool letter from my intended wife; if I had only heard a rumour of any thing from which fickleness in her might have been inferred; if I had found in her any, even the smallest, abatement of affection; if she had but let go any one of the hundred strings by which she held my heart: if any of these, never would the world have heard of me. Young as I was; able as I was as a soldier; proud as I was of the admiration and commendations of which I was the object; fond as I was, too, of the command, which, at so early an age, my rare conduct and great natural talents had given me; sanguine as was my mind, and brilliant as were my prospects: yet I had seen so much of the meannesses, the unjust partialities, the insolent pomposity, the disgusting dissipations of that way of life, that I was weary of it: I longed, exchanging my fine laced coat for the Yankee farmer's home-spun, to be where I should never behold the supple crouch of servility, and never hear the hectoring voice of authority, again; and, on the lonely banks of this branch-covered creek, which contained (she out of the question) every thing congenial to my taste and dear to my heart, I, unapplauded, unfeared, unenvied and uncalumniated, should have lived and died.



LETTER IV

TO A HUSBAND

152. It is in this capacity that your conduct will have the greatest effect on your happiness; and a great deal will depend on the manner in which you begin. I am to suppose that you have made a good choice; but a good young woman may be made, by a weak, a harsh, a neglectful, an extravagant, or a profligate husband, a really bad wife and mother. All in a wife, beyond her own natural disposition and education is, nine times out of ten, the work of her husband.

153. The first thing of all, be the rank in life what it may, is to convince her of the necessity of moderation in expense; and to make her clearly see the justice of beginning to act upon the presumption, that there are children coming, that they are to be provided for, and that she is to assist in the making of that provision. Legally speaking, we have a right to do what we please with our own property, which, however, is not our own, unless it exceed our debts. And, morally speaking, we, at the moment of our marriage, contract a debt with the naturally to be expected fruit of it; and, therefore (reserving further remarks upon this subject till I come to speak of the education of children), the scale of expense should, at the beginning, be as low as that of which a due attention to rank in life will admit.

154. The great danger of all is, beginning with servants, or a servant. Where there are riches, or where the business is so great as to demand help in the carrying on of the affairs of a house, one or more female servants must be kept; but, where the work of a house can be done by one pair of hands, why should there be two; especially as you cannot have the hands without having the mouth, and, which is frequently not less costly, inconvenient and injurious, the tongue? When children come, there must, at times, be some foreign aid; but, until then, what need can the wife of a young tradesman, or even farmer (unless the family be great) have of a servant? The wife is young, and why is she not to work as well as the husband? What justice is there in wanting you to keep two women instead of one? You have not married them both in form; but, if they be inseparable, you have married them in substance; and if you are free from the crime of bigamy, you have the far most burthensome part of its consequences.

155. I am well aware of the unpopularity of this doctrine; well aware of its hostility to prevalent habits; well aware that almost every tradesman and every farmer, though with scarcely a shilling to call his own; and that every clerk, and every such person, begins by keeping a servant, and that the latter is generally provided before the wife be installed: I am well aware of all this; but knowing, from long and attentive observation, that it is the great bane of the marriage life; the great cause of that penury, and of those numerous and tormenting embarrassments, amidst which conjugal felicity can seldom long be kept alive, I give the advice, and state the reasons on which it was founded.

156. In London, or near it, a maid servant cannot be kept at an expense so low as that of thirty pounds a year; for, besides her wages, board and lodging, there must be a fire solely for her; or she must sit with the husband and wife, hear every word that passes between them, and between them and their friends; which will, of course, greatly add to the pleasures of their fire-side! To keep her tongue still would be impossible, and, indeed, unreasonable; and if, as may frequently happen, she be prettier than the wife, she will know how to give the suitable interpretation to the looks which, to a next to a certainty, she will occasionally get from him, whom, as it were in mockery, she calls by the name of 'master.' This is almost downright bigamy; but this can never do; and, therefore, she must have a fire to herself. Besides the blaze of coals, however, there is another sort of flame that she will inevitably covet. She will by no means be sparing of the coals; but, well fed and well lodged, as she will be, whatever you may be, she will naturally sigh for the fire of love, for which she carries in her bosom a match always ready prepared. In plain language, you have a man to keep, a part, at least, of every week; and the leg of lamb, which might have lasted you and your wife for three days, will, by this gentleman's sighs, be borne away in one. Shut the door against this intruder; out she goes herself; and, if she go empty-handed, she is no true Christian, or, at least, will not be looked upon as such by the charitable friend at whose house she meets the longing soul, dying partly with love and partly with hunger.

157. The cost, altogether, is nearer fifty pounds a year than thirty. How many thousands of tradesmen and clerks, and the like, who might have passed through life without a single embarrassment, have lived in continual trouble and fear, and found a premature grave, from this very cause, and this cause alone! When I, on my return from America, in 1800, lived a short time in Saint James's Street, following my habit of early rising, I used to see the servant maids, at almost every house, dispensing charity at the expense of their masters, long before they, good men, opened their eyes, who thus did deeds of benevolence, not only without boasting of them, but without knowing of them. Meat, bread, cheese, butter, coals, candles; all came with equal freedom from these liberal hands. I have observed the same, in my early walks and rides, in every part of this great place and its environs. Where there is one servant it is worse than where there are two or more; for, happily for their employers, they do not always agree. So that the oppression is most heavy on those who are the least able to bear it: and particularly on clerk, and such like people, whose wives seem to think, that, because the husband's work is of a genteel description, they ought to live the life of ladies. Poor fellows! their work is not hard and rough, to be sure; but, it is work, and work for many hours too, and painful enough; and as to their income, it scarcely exceeds, on an average, the double, at any rate, of that of a journeyman carpenter, bricklayer, or tailor.

158. Besides, the man and wife will live on cheaper diet and drink than a servant will live. Thousands, who would never have had beer in their house, have it for the servant, who will not live without it. However frugal your wife, her frugality is of little use, if she have one of these inmates to provide for. Many a hundred thousand times has it happened that the butcher and the butter-man have been applied to solely because there was a servant to satisfy. You cannot, with this clog everlastingly attached to you, be frugal, if you would: you can save nothing against the days of expense, which are, however, pretty sure to come. And why should you bring into your house a trouble like this; an absolute annoyance; a something for your wife to watch, to be a constraint upon her, to thwart her in her best intentions, to make her uneasy, and to sour her temper? Why should you do this foolish thing? Merely to comply with corrupt fashion; merely from false shame, and false and contemptible pride? If a young man were, on his marriage, to find any difficulty in setting this ruinous fashion at defiance, a very good way would be to count down to his wife, at the end of every week, the amount of the expense of a servant for that week, and request her to deposit it in her drawer. In a short time she would find the sum so large, that she would be frightened at the thoughts of a servant; and would never dream of one again, except in case of absolute necessity, and then for as short a time as possible.

159. But the wife may not be able to do all the work to be done in the house. Not able! A young woman not able to cook and wash, and mend and make, and clean the house and make the bed for one young man and herself, and that young man her husband too, who is quite willing (if he be worth a straw) to put up with cold dinner, or with a crust; to get up and light her fire; to do any thing that the mind can suggest to spare her labour, and to conduce to her convenience! Not able to do this? Then, if she brought no fortune, and he had none, she ought not to have been able to marry: and, let me tell you, young man, a small fortune would not put a servant-keeping wife upon an equality with one who required no such inmate.

160. If, indeed, the work of a house were harder than a young woman could perform without pain, or great fatigue; if it had a tendency to impair her health or deface her beauty; then you might hesitate: but, it is not too hard, and it tends to preserve health, to keep the spirits buoyant, and, of course, to preserve beauty. You often hear girls, while scrubbing or washing, singing till they are out of breath; but never while they are at what they call working at the needle. The American wives are most exemplary in this respect. They have none of that false pride, which prevents thousands in England from doing that which interest, reason, and even their own inclination would prompt them to do. They work, not from necessity; not from compulsion of any sort; for their husbands are the most indulgent in the whole world. In the towns they go to the market, and cheerfully carry home the result: in the country, they not only do the work in the house, but extend their labours to the garden, plant and weed and hoe, and gather and preserve the fruits and the herbs; and this, too, in a climate far from being so favourable to labour as that of England; and they are amply repaid for these by those gratifications which their excellent economy enables their husbands to bestow upon them, and which it is their universal habit to do with a liberal hand.

161. But did I practise what I am here preaching? Aye, and to the full extent. Till I had a second child, no servant ever entered my house, though well able to keep one; and never, in my whole life, did I live in a house so clean, in such trim order, and never have I eaten or drunk, or slept or dressed, in a manner so perfectly to my fancy, as I did then. I had a great deal of business to attend to, that took me a great part of the day from home; but, whenever I could spare a minute from business, the child was in my arms; I rendered the mother's labour as light as I could; any bit of food satisfied me; when watching was necessary, we shared it between us; and that famous GRAMMAR for teaching French people English, which has been for thirty years, and still is, the great work of this kind, throughout all America, and in every nation in Europe, was written by me, in hours not employed in business, and, in great part, during my share of the night-watchings over a sick, and then only child, who, after lingering many months, died in my arms.

162. This was the way that we went on: this was the way that we began the married life; and surely, that which we did with pleasure no young couple, unendowed with fortune, ought to be ashamed to do. But she may be ill; the time may be near at hand, or may have actually arrived, when she must encounter that particular pain and danger of which you have been the happy cause! Oh! that is quite another matter! And if you now exceed in care, in watchings over her, in tender attention to all her wishes, in anxious efforts to quiet her fears; if you exceed in pains and expense to procure her relief and secure her life; if you, in any of these, exceed that which I would recommend, you must be romantic indeed! She deserves them all, and more than all, ten thousand times told. And now it is that you feel the blessing conferred by her economy. That heap of money, which might have been squandered on, or by, or in consequence of, an useless servant, you now have in hand wherewith to procure an abundance of that skill and that attendance of which she stands in absolute need; and she, when restored to you in smiling health, has the just pride to reflect, that she may have owed her life and your happiness to the effects of her industry.

163. It is the beginning that is every thing in this important case; and you will have, perhaps, much to do to convince her, not that what you recommend is advantageous; not that it is right; but to convince her that she can do it without sinking below the station that she ought to maintain. She would cheerfully do it; but there are her next-door neighbours, who do not do it, though, in all other respects, on a par with her. It is not laziness, but pernicious fashion, that you will have to combat. But the truth is, that there ought to be no combat at all; this important matter ought to be settled and fully agreed on beforehand. If she really love you, and have common sense, she will not hesitate a moment; and if she be deficient in either of these respects; and if you be so mad in love as to be unable to exist without her, it is better to cease to exist at once, than to become the toiling and embarrassed slave of a wasting and pillaging servant.

164. The next thing to be attended to is, your demeanor towards a young wife. As to oldish ones, or widows, time and other things have, in most cases, blunted their feelings, and rendered harsh or stern demeanor in the husband a matter not of heart-breaking consequence. But with a young and inexperienced one, the case is very different; and you should bear in mind, that the first frown that she receives from you is a dagger to her heart. Nature has so ordered it, that men shall become less ardent in their passion after the wedding day; and that women shall not. Their ardour increases rather than the contrary; and they are surprisingly quick-sighted and inquisitive on this score. When the child comes, it divides this ardour with the father; but until then you have it all; and if you have a mind to be happy, repay it with all your soul. Let what may happen to put you out of humour with others, let nothing put you out of humour with her. Let your words and looks and manners be just what they were before you called her wife.

165. But now, and throughout your life, show your affection for her, and your admiration of her, not in nonsensical compliment; not in picking up her handkerchief, or her glove, or in carrying her fan or parasol; not, if you have the means, in hanging trinkets and baubles upon her; not in making yourself a fool by winking at, and seeming pleased at, her foibles, or follies, or faults; but show them by acts of real goodness towards her; prove by unequivocal deeds the high value that you set on her health and life and peace of mind; let your praise of her go to the full extent of her deserts, but let it be consistent with truth and with sense, and such as to convince her of your sincerity. He who is the flatterer of his wife only prepares her ears for the hyperbolical stuff of others. The kindest appellation that her Christian name affords is the best you can use, especially before faces. An everlasting 'my dear' is but a sorry compensation for a want of that sort of love that makes the husband cheerfully toil by day, break his rest by night, endure all sorts of hardships, if the life or health of his wife demand it. Let your deeds, and not your words, carry to her heart a daily and hourly confirmation of the fact, that you value her health and life and happiness beyond all other things in the world; and let this be manifest to her, particularly at those times when life is always more or less in danger.

166. I began my young marriage days in and near Philadelphia. At one of those times to which I have just alluded, in the middle of the burning hot month of July, I was greatly afraid of fatal consequences to my wife for want of sleep, she not having, after the great danger was over, had any sleep for more than forty-eight hours. All great cities, in hot countries, are, I believe, full of dogs; and they, in the very hot weather, keep up, during the night, a horrible barking and fighting and howling. Upon the particular occasion to which I am adverting, they made a noise so terrible and so unremitted, that it was next to impossible that even a person in full health and free from pain should obtain a minute's sleep. I was, about nine in the evening, sitting by the bed: 'I do think,' said she, 'that I could go to sleep now, if it were not for the dogs.' Down stairs I went, and out I sallied, in my shirt and trowsers, and without shoes and stockings; and, going to a heap of stones lying beside the road, set to work upon the dogs, going backward and forward, and keeping them at two or three hundred yards' distance from the house. I walked thus the whole night, barefooted, lest the noise of my shoes might possibly reach her ears; and I remember that the bricks of the causeway were, even in the night, so hot as to be disagreeable to my feet. My exertions produced the desired effect: a sleep of several hours was the consequence; and, at eight o'clock in the morning, off went I to a day's business, which was to end at six in the evening.

167. Women are all patriots of the soil; and when her neighbours used to ask my wife whether all English husbands were like hers, she boldly answered in the affirmative. I had business to occupy the whole of my time, Sundays and weekdays, except sleeping hours; but I used to make time to assist her in the taking care of her baby, and in all sorts of things: get up, light her fire, boil her tea-kettle, carry her up warm water in cold weather, take the child while she dressed herself and got the breakfast ready, then breakfast, get her in water and wood for the day, then dress myself neatly, and sally forth to my business. The moment that was over I used to hasten back to her again; and I no more thought of spending a moment away from her, unless business compelled me, than I thought of quitting the country and going to sea. The thunder and lightning are tremendous in America, compared with what they are in England. My wife was, at one time, very much afraid of thunder and lightning; and as is the feeling of all such women, and, indeed, all men too, she wanted company, and particularly her husband, in those times of danger. I knew well, of course, that my presence would not diminish the danger; but, be I at what I might, if within reach of home, I used to quit my business and hasten to her, the moment I perceived a thunder storm approaching. Scores of miles have I, first and last, run on this errand, in the streets of Philadelphia! The Frenchmen, who were my scholars, used to laugh at me exceedingly on this account; and sometimes, when I was making an appointment with them, they would say, with a smile and a bow, 'Sauve la tonnerre toujours, Monsieur Cobbett.'

168. I never dangled about at the heels of my wife; seldom, very seldom, ever walked out, as it is called, with her; I never 'went a walking' in the whole course of my life; never went to walk without having some object in view other than the walk; and, as I never could walk at a slow pace, it would have been hard work for her to keep up with me; so that, in the nearly forty years of our married life, we have not walked out together, perhaps, twenty times. I hate a dangler, who is more like a footman than a husband. It is very cheap to be kind in trifles; but that which rivets the affections is not to be purchased with money. The great thing of all, however, is to prove your anxiety at those times of peril to her, and for which times you, nevertheless, wish. Upon those occasions I was never from home, be the necessity for it ever so great: it was my rule, that every thing must give way to that. In the year 1809, some English local militiamen were flogged, in the Isle of Ely, in England, under a guard of Hanoverians, then stationed in England. I, reading an account of this in a London newspaper, called the COURIER, expressed my indignation at it in such terms as it became an Englishman to do. The Attorney General, Gibbs, was set on upon me; he harassed me for nearly a year, then brought me to trial, and I was, by Ellenborough, Grose, Le Blanc, and Bailey, sentenced to two years' imprisonment in Newgate, to pay a fine to the king of a thousand pounds, and to be held in heavy bail for seven years after the expiration of the imprisonment! Every one regarded it as a sentence of death. I lived in the country at the time, seventy miles from London; I had a farm on my hands; I had a family of small children, amongst whom I had constantly lived; I had a most anxious and devoted wife, who was, too, in that state, which rendered the separation more painful ten-fold. I was put into a place amongst felons, from which I had to rescue myself at the price of twelve guineas a week for the whole of the two years. The King, poor man! was, at the close of my imprisonment, not in a condition to receive the thousand pounds; but his son, the present king, punctually received it 'in his name and behalf;' and he keeps it still.

169. The sentence, though it proved not to be one of death, was, in effect, one of ruin, as far as then-possessed property went. But this really appeared as nothing, compared with the circumstance, that I must now have a child born in a felons' jail, or be absent from the scene at the time of the birth. My wife, who had come to see me for the last time previous to her lying-in, perceiving my deep dejection at the approach of her departure for Botley, resolved not to go; and actually went and took a lodging as near to Newgate as she could find one, in order that the communication between us might be as speedy as possible; and in order that I might see the doctor, and receive assurances from him relative to her state. The nearest lodging that she could find was in Skinner-street, at the corner of a street leading to Smithfield. So that there she was, amidst the incessant rattle of coaches and butchers' carts, and the noise of cattle, dogs, and bawling men; instead of being in a quiet and commodious country-house, with neighbours and servants and every thing necessary about her. Yet, so great is the power of the mind in such cases, she, though the circumstances proved uncommonly perilous, and were attended with the loss of the child, bore her sufferings with the greatest composure, because, at any minute she could send a message to, and hear from, me. If she had gone to Botley, leaving me in that state of anxiety in which she saw me, I am satisfied that she would have died; and that event taking place at such a distance from me, how was I to contemplate her corpse, surrounded by her distracted children, and to have escaped death, or madness, myself? If such was not the effect of this merciless act of the government towards me, that amiable body may be well assured that I have taken and recorded the will for the deed, and that as such it will live in my memory as long as that memory shall last.

170. I make no apology for this account of my own conduct, because example is better than precept, and because I believe that my example may have weight with many thousands, as it has had in respect to early rising, abstinence, sobriety, industry, and mercy towards the poor. It is not, then, dangling about after a wife; it is not the loading her with baubles and trinkets; it is not the jaunting of her about from show to show, and from what is called pleasure to pleasure. It is none of these that endears you to her: it is the adherence to that part of the promise you have made her: 'With my body I thee worship;' that is to say, respect and honour by personal attention and acts of affection. And remember, that the greatest possible proof that you can give of real and solid affection is to give her your time, when not wanted in matters of business; when not wanted for the discharge of some duty, either towards the public or towards private persons. Amongst duties of this sort, we must, of course, in some ranks and circumstances of life, include the intercourse amongst friends and neighbours, which may frequently and reasonably call the husband from his home: but what are we to think of the husband who is in the habit of leaving his own fire-side, after the business of the day is over, and seeking promiscuous companions in the ale or the coffee house? I am told that, in France, it is rare to meet with a husband who does not spend every evening of his life in what is called a caffe; that is to say, a place for no other purpose than that of gossipping, drinking and gaming. And it is with great sorrow that I acknowledge that many English husbands indulge too much in a similar habit. Drinking clubs, smoking clubs, singing clubs, clubs of odd-fellows, whist clubs, sotting clubs: these are inexcusable, they are censurable, they are at once foolish and wicked, even in single men; what must they be, then, in husbands; and how are they to answer, not only to their wives, but to their children, for this profligate abandonment of their homes; this breach of their solemn vow made to the former, this evil example to the latter?

171. Innumerable are the miseries that spring from this cause. The expense is, in the first place, very considerable. I much question whether, amongst tradesmen, a shilling a night pays the average score; and that, too, for that which is really worth nothing at all, and cannot, even by possibility, be attended with any one single advantage, however small. Fifteen pounds a year thus thrown away, would amount, in the course of a tradesman's life, to a decent fortune for a child. Then there is the injury to health from these night adventures; there are the quarrels, there is the vicious habit of loose and filthy talk; there are the slanders and the back-bitings; there is the admiration of contemptible wit, and there are the scoffings at all that is sober and serious.

172. And does the husband who thus abandons his wife and children imagine that she will not, in some degree at least, follow his example? If he do, he is very much deceived. If she imitate him even in drinking, he has no great reason to complain; and then the cost may be two shillings the night instead of one, equal in amount to the cost of all the bread wanted in the family, while the baker's bill is, perhaps, unpaid. Here are the slanderings, too, going on at home; for, while the husbands are assembled, it would be hard if the wives were not to do the same; and the very least that is to be expected is, that the tea-pot should keep pace with the porter-pot or grog-glass. Hence crowds of female acquaintances and intruders, and all the consequent and inevitable squabbles which form no small part of the torment of the life of man.

173. If you have servants, they know to a moment the time of your absence; and they regulate their proceedings accordingly. 'Like master like man,' is an old and true proverb; and it is natural, if not just, that it should be thus; for it would be unjust if the careless and neglectful sot were served as faithfully as the vigilant, attentive and sober man. Late hours, cards and dice, are amongst the consequences of the master's absence; and why not, seeing that he is setting the example? Fire, candle, profligate visitants, expences, losses, children ruined in habits and morals, and, in short, a train of evils hardly to be enumerated, arise from this most vicious habit of the master spending his leisure time from home. But beyond all the rest is the ill-treatment of the wife. When left to ourselves we all seek the company that we like best; the company in which we take the most delight: and therefore every husband, be his state of life what it may, who spends his leisure time, or who, at least, is in the habit of doing it, in company other than that of his wife and family, tells her and them, as plainly by deeds as he could possibly do by words, that he takes more delight in other company than in theirs. Children repay this with disregard for their father; but to a wife of any sensibility, it is either a dagger to her heart or an incitement to revenge, and revenge, too, of a species which a young woman will seldom be long in want of the means to gratify. In conclusion of these remarks respecting absentee husbands, I would recommend all those who are prone to, or likely to fall into, the practice, to remember the words of Mrs. SULLEN, in the BEAUX' STRATAGEM: 'My husband,' says she, addressing a footman whom she had taken as a paramour, 'comes reeling home at midnight, tumbles in beside me as a salmon flounces in a net, oversets the economy of my bed, belches the fumes of his drink in my face, then twists himself round, leaving me half naked, and listening till morning to that tuneful nightingale, his nose.' It is at least forty-three years since I read the BEAUX' STRATAGEM, and I now quote from memory; but the passage has always occurred to me whenever I have seen a sottish husband; and though that species of revenge, for the taking of which the lady made this apology, was carrying the thing too far, yet I am ready to confess, that if I had to sit in judgment on her for taking even this revenge, my sentence would be very lenient; for what right has such a husband to expect fidelity? He has broken his vow; and by what rule of right has she to be bound to hers? She thought that she was marrying a man; and she finds that she was married to a beast. He has, indeed, committed no offence that the law of the land can reach; but he has violated the vow by which he obtained possession of her person; and, in the eye of justice, the compact between them is dissolved.

174. The way to avoid the sad consequences of which I have been speaking is to begin well: many a man has become a sottish husband, and brought a family to ruin, without being sottishly inclined, and without liking the gossip of the ale or coffee house. It is by slow degrees that the mischief is done. He is first inveigled, and, in time, he really likes the thing; and, when arrived at that point, he is incurable. Let him resolve, from the very first, never to spend an hour from home, unless business, or, at least, some necessary and rational purpose demand it. Where ought he to be, but with the person whom he himself hath chosen to be his partner for life, and the mother of his children? What other company ought he to deem so good and so fitting as this? With whom else can he so pleasantly spend his hours of leisure and relaxation? Besides, if he quit her to seek company more agreeable, is not she set at large by that act of his? What justice is there in confining her at home without any company at all, while he rambles forth in search of company more gay than he finds at home?

175. Let the young married man try the thing; let him resolve not to be seduced from his home; let him never go, in one single instance, unnecessarily from his own fire-side. Habit is a powerful thing; and if he begin right, the pleasure that he will derive from it will induce him to continue right. This is not being 'tied to the apron-strings,' which means quite another matter, as I shall show by-and-by. It is being at the husband's place, whether he have children or not. And is there any want of matter for conversation between a man and his wife? Why not talk of the daily occurrences to her, as well as to any body else; and especially to a company of tippling and noisy men? If you excuse yourself by saying that you go to read the newspaper, I answer, buy the newspaper, if you must read it: the cost is not half of what you spend per day at the pot-house; and then you have it your own, and may read it at your leisure, and your wife can read it as well as yourself, if read it you must. And, in short, what must that man be made of, who does not prefer sitting by his own fire-side with his wife and children, reading to them, or hearing them read, to hearing the gabble and balderdash of a club or a pot-house company!