TO A HUSBAND (continued 2)

212. As to the expense, there is no comparison between that of a woman servant and a wife, in the house of a farmer or a tradesman. The wages of the former is not the expense; it is the want of a common interest with you, and this you can obtain in no one but a wife. But there are the children. I, for my part, firmly believe that a farmer, married at twenty-five, and having ten children during the first ten years, would be able to save more money during these years, than a bachelor, of the same age, would be able to save, on the same farm, in a like space of time, he keeping only one maid servant. One single fit of illness, of two months' duration, might sweep away more than all the children would cost in the whole ten years, to say nothing of the continual waste and pillage, and the idleness, going on from the first day of the ten years to the last.

213. Besides, is the money all? What a life to lead!! No one to talk to without going from home, or without getting some one to come to you; no friend to sit and talk to: pleasant evenings to pass! Nobody to share with you your sorrows or your pleasures: no soul having a common interest with you: all around you taking care of themselves, and no care of you: no one to cheer you in moments of depression: to say all in a word, no one to love you, and no prospect of ever seeing any such one to the end of your days. For, as to parents and brethren, if you have them, they have other and very different ties; and, however laudable your feelings as son and brother, those feelings are of a different character. Then as to gratifications, from which you will hardly abstain altogether, are they generally of little expense? and are they attended with no trouble, no vexation, no disappointment, no jealousy even, and are they never followed by shame or remorse?

214. It does very well in bantering songs, to say that the bachelor's life is 'devoid of care.' My observation tells me the contrary, and reason concurs, in this regard, with experience. The bachelor has no one on whom he can in all cases rely. When he quits his home, he carries with him cares that are unknown to the married man. If, indeed, like the common soldier, he have merely a lodging-place, and a bundle of clothes, given in charge to some one, he may be at his ease; but if he possess any thing of a home, he is never sure of its safety; and this uncertainty is a great enemy to cheerfulness. And as to efficiency in life, how is the bachelor to equal the married man? In the case of farmers and tradesmen, the latter have so clearly the advantage over the former, that one need hardly insist upon the point; but it is, and must be, the same in all the situations of life. To provide for a wife and children is the greatest of all possible spurs to exertion. Many a man, naturally prone to idleness, has become active and industrious when he saw children growing up about him; many a dull sluggard has become, if not a bright man, at least a bustling man, when roused to exertion by his love. Dryden's account of the change wrought in CYMON, is only a strong case of the kind. And, indeed, if a man will not exert himself for the sake of a wife and children, he can have no exertion in him; or he must be deaf to all the dictates of nature.

215. Perhaps the world never exhibited a more striking proof of the truth of this doctrine than that which is exhibited in me; and I am sure that every one will say, without any hesitation, that a fourth part of the labours I have performed, never would have been performed, if I had not been a married man. In the first place, they could not; for I should, all the early part of my life, have been rambling and roving about as most bachelors are. I should have had no home that I cared a straw about, and should have wasted the far greater part of my time. The great affair of home being settled, having the home secured, I had leisure to employ my mind on things which it delighted in. I got rid at once of all cares, all anxieties, and had only to provide for the very moderate wants of that home. But the children began to come. They sharpened my industry: they spurred me on. To be sure, I had other and strong motives: I wrote for fame, and was urged forward by ill-treatment, and by the desire to triumph over my enemies; but, after all, a very large part of my nearly a hundred volumes may be fairly ascribed to the wife and children.

216. I might have done something; but, perhaps, not a thousandth part of what I have done; not even a thousandth part: for the chances are, that I, being fond of a military life, should have ended my days ten or twenty years ago, in consequence of wounds, or fatigue, or, more likely, in consequence of the persecutions of some haughty and insolent fool, whom nature had formed to black my shoes, and whom a system of corruption had made my commander. Love came and rescued me from this state of horrible slavery; placed the whole of my time at my own disposal; made me as free as air; removed every restraint upon the operations of my mind, naturally disposed to communicate its thoughts to others; and gave me, for my leisure hours, a companion, who, though deprived of all opportunity of acquiring what is called learning, had so much good sense, so much useful knowledge, was so innocent, so just in all her ways, so pure in thought, word and deed, so disinterested, so generous, so devoted to me and her children, so free from all disguise, and, withal, so beautiful and so talkative, and in a voice so sweet, so cheering, that I must, seeing the health and the capacity which it had pleased God to give me, have been a criminal, if I had done much less than that which I have done; and I have always said, that, if my country feel any gratitude for my labours, that gratitude is due to her full as much as to me.

217. 'Care'! What care have I known! I have been buffeted about by this powerful and vindictive Government; I have repeatedly had the fruit of my labour snatched away from me by it; but I had a partner that never frowned, that was never melancholy, that never was subdued in spirit, that never abated a smile, on these occasions, that fortified me, and sustained me by her courageous example, and that was just as busy and as zealous in taking care of the remnant as she had been in taking care of the whole; just as cheerful, and just as full of caresses, when brought down to a mean hired lodging, as when the mistress of a fine country house, with all its accompaniments; and, whether from her words or her looks, no one could gather that she regretted the change. What 'cares' have I had, then? What have I had worthy of the name of 'cares'?

218. And, how is it now? How is it when the sixty-fourth year has come? And how should I have been without this wife and these children? I might have amassed a tolerable heap of money; but what would that have done for me? It might have bought me plenty of professions of attachment; plenty of persons impatient for my exit from the world; but not one single grain of sorrow, for any anguish that might have attended my approaching end. To me, no being in this world appears so wretched as an Old Bachelor. Those circumstances, those changes in his person and in his mind, which, in the husband, increase rather than diminish the attentions to him, produce all the want of feeling attendant on disgust; and he beholds, in the conduct of the mercenary crew that generally surround him, little besides an eager desire to profit from that event, the approach of which, nature makes a subject of sorrow with him.

219. Before I quit this part of my work, I cannot refrain from offering my opinion with regard to what is due from husband to wife, when the disposal of his property comes to be thought of. When marriage is an affair settled by deeds, contracts, and lawyers, the husband, being bound beforehand, has really no will to make. But where he has a will to make, and a faithful wife to leave behind him, it is his first duty to provide for her future well-being, to the utmost of his power. If she brought him no money, she brought him her person; and by delivering that up to him, she established a claim to his careful protection of her to the end of her life. Some men think, or act as if they thought, that, if a wife bring no money, and if the husband gain money by his business or profession, that money is his, and not hers, because she has not been doing any of those things for which the money has been received. But is this way of thinking just? By the marriage vow, the husband endows the wife with all his worldly goods; and not a bit too much is this, when she is giving him the command and possession of her person. But does she not help to acquire the money? Speaking, for instance, of the farmer or the merchant, the wife does not, indeed, go to plough, or to look after the ploughing and sowing; she does not purchase or sell the stock; she does not go to the fair or the market; but she enables him to do all these without injury to his affairs at home; she is the guardian of his property; she preserves what would otherwise be lost to him. The barn and the granary, though they create nothing, have, in the bringing of food to our mouths, as much merit as the fields themselves. The wife does not, indeed, assist in the merchant's counting-house; she does not go upon the exchange; she does not even know what he is doing; but she keeps his house in order; she rears up his children; she provides a scene of suitable resort for his friends; she insures him a constant retreat from the fatigues of his affairs; she makes his home pleasant, and she is the guardian of his income.

220. In both these cases, the wife helps to gain the money; and in cases where there is no gain, where the income is by descent, or is fixed, she helps to prevent it from being squandered away. It is, therefore, as much hers as it is the husband's; and though the law gives him, in many cases, the power of keeping her share from her, no just man will ever avail himself of that power. With regard to the tying up of widows from marrying again, I will relate what took place in a case of this kind, in America. A merchant, who had, during his married state, risen from poverty to very great riches, and who had, nevertheless, died at about forty years of age, left the whole of his property to his wife for her life, and at her disposal at her death, provided that she did not marry. The consequence was, that she took a husband without marrying, and, at her death (she having no children), gave the whole of the property to the second husband! So much for posthumous jealousy!

221. Where there are children, indeed, it is the duty of the husband to provide, in certain cases, against step-fathers, who are very prone not to be the most just and affectionate parents. It is an unhappy circumstance, when a dying father is compelled to have fears of this sort. There is seldom an apology to be offered for a mother that will hazard the happiness of her children by a second marriage. The law allows it, to be sure; but there is, as Prior says, 'something beyond the letter of the law.' I know what ticklish ground I am treading on here; but, though it is as lawful for a woman to take a second husband as for a man to take a second wife, the cases are different, and widely different, in the eye of morality and of reason; for, as adultery in the wife is a greater offence than adultery in the husband; as it is more gross, as it includes prostitution; so a second marriage in the woman is more gross than in the man, argues great deficiency in that delicacy, that innate modesty, which, after all, is the great charm, the charm of charms, in the female sex. I do not like to hear a man talk of his first wife, especially in the presence of a second; but to hear a woman thus talk of her first husband, has never, however beautiful and good she might be, failed to sink her in my estimation. I have, in such cases, never been able to keep out of my mind that concatenation of ideas, which, in spite of custom, in spite of the frequency of the occurrence, leave an impression deeply disadvantageous to the party; for, after the greatest of ingenuity has exhausted itself in the way of apology, it comes to this at last, that the person has a second time undergone that surrender, to which nothing but the most ardent affection, could ever reconcile a chaste and delicate woman.

222. The usual apologies, that 'a lone woman wants a protector; that she cannot manage her estate; that she cannot carry on her business; that she wants a home for her children'; all these apologies are not worth a straw; for what is the amount of them? Why, that she surrenders her person to secure these ends! And if we admit the validity of such apologies, are we far from apologising for the kept-mistress, and even the prostitute? Nay, the former of these may (if she confine herself to one man) plead more boldly in her defence; and even the latter may plead that hunger, which knows no law, and no decorum, and no delicacy. These unhappy, but justly-reprobated and despised parties, are allowed no apology at all: though reduced to the begging of their bread, the world grants them no excuse. The sentence on them is: 'You shall suffer every hardship; you shall submit to hunger and nakedness; you shall perish by the way-side, rather than you shall surrender your person to the dishonour of the female sex.' But can we, without crying injustice, pass this sentence upon them, and, at the same time hold it to be proper, decorous, and delicate, that widows shall surrender their persons for worldly gain, for the sake of ease, or for any consideration whatsoever?

223. It is disagreeable to contemplate the possibility of cases of separation; but amongst the evils of life, such have occurred, and will occur; and the injured parties, while they are sure to meet with the pity of all just persons, must console themselves that they have not merited their fate. In the making one's choice, no human foresight or prudence can, in all cases, guard against an unhappy result. There is one species of husbands to be occasionally met with in all countries, meriting particular reprobation, and causing us to lament, that there is no law to punish offenders so enormous. There was a man in Pennsylvania, apparently a very amiable young man, having a good estate of his own, and marrying a most beautiful woman of his own age, of rich parents, and of virtue perfectly spotless. He very soon took to both gaming and drinking (the last being the most fashionable vice of the country); he neglected his affairs and his family; in about four years spent his estate, and became a dependent on his wife's father, together with his wife and three children. Even this would have been of little consequence, as far as related to expense; but he led the most scandalous life, and was incessant in his demands of money for the purposes of that infamous life. All sorts of means were resorted to to reclaim him, and all in vain; and the wretch, availing himself of the pleading of his wife's affection, and of his power over the children more especially, continued for ten or twelve years to plunder the parents, and to disgrace those whom it was his bounden duty to assist in making happy. At last, going out in the dark, in a boat, and being partly drunk, he went to the bottom of the Delaware, and became food for otters or fishes, to the great joy of all who knew him, excepting only his amiable wife. I can form an idea of no baseness equal to this. There is more of baseness in this character than in that of the robber. The man who obtains the means of indulging in vice, by robbery, exposes himself to the inflictions of the law; but though he merits punishment, he merits it less than the base miscreant who obtains his means by his threats to disgrace his own wife, children, and the wife's parents. The short way in such a case, is the best; set the wretch at defiance; resort to the strong arm of the law wherever it will avail you; drive him from your house like a mad dog; for, be assured, that a being so base and cruel is never to be reclaimed: all your efforts at persuasion are useless; his promises and vows are made but to be broken; all your endeavours to keep the thing from the knowledge of the world, only prolong his plundering of you; and many a tender father and mother have been ruined by such endeavours; the whole story must come out at last, and it is better to come out before you be ruined, than after your ruin is completed.

224. However, let me hope, that those who read this work will always be secure against evils like these; let me hope, that the young men who read it will abstain from those vices which lead to such fatal results; that they will, before they utter the marriage vow, duly reflect on the great duties that that vow imposes on them; that they will repel, from the outset, every temptation to any thing tending to give pain to the defenceless persons whose love for them have placed them at their mercy; and that they will imprint on their own minds this truth, that a bad husband was never yet a happy man.