o seize that opportunity of settling the family accounts.
Twenty such tricks will the faithfullest wife in the world not refuse to
play, and then look astonished when the fellow fetches in a mistress.
Boarding-schools were established," continued he, "for the conjugal quiet
of the parents. The two partners cannot agree which child to fondle, nor
how to fondle them, so they put the young ones to school, and remove the
cause of contention. The little girl pokes her head, the mother reproves
her sharply. 'Do not mind your mamma,' says the father, 'my dear, but do
your own way.' The mother complains to me of this. 'Madam,' said I,
'your husband is right all the while; he is with you but two hours of the
day, perhaps, and then you tease him by making the child cry. Are not
ten hours enough for tuition? and are the hours of pleasure so frequent
in life, that when a man gets a couple of quiet ones to spend in familiar
chat with his wife, they must be poisoned by petty mortifications? Put
missy to school; she will learn to hold her head like her neighbours, and
you will no longer torment your family for want of other talk.'".

The vacuity of life had at some early period of his life struck so
forcibly on the mind of Mr. Johnson, that it became by repeated
impression his favourite hypothesis, and the general tenor of his
reasonings commonly ended there, wherever they might begin. Such things,
therefore, as other philosophers often attribute to various and
contradictory causes, appeared to him uniform enough; all was done to
fill up the time, upon his principle. I used to tell him that it was
like the clown's answer in As You Like It, of "Oh, lord, sir!" for that
it suited every occasion. One man, for example, was profligate and wild,
as we call it, followed the girls, or sat still at the gaming-table.
"Why, life must be filled up," says Johnson, "and the man who is not
capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his
senses can afford." Another was a hoarder. "Why, a fellow must do
something; and what, so easy to a narrow mind as hoarding halfpence till
they turn into sixpences." Avarice was a vice against which, however, I
never much heard Mr. Johnson declaim, till one represented it to him
connected with cruelty, or some such disgraceful companion. "Do not,"
said he, "discourage your children from hoarding if they have a taste to
it: whoever lays up his penny rather than part with it for a ca