encouraged them more
than another. That the tailor, for example, whom he had been speaking
of, though purse-proud, overbearing, and rapacious, was not more immoral
or depraved than his neighbours, and had probably less of the libertine
than most of them. He admitted that evil thoughts would enter the mind
in any situation, and could not reasonably be expected to be kept out of
his daughters' heads (being, as he said, but women): yet he conceived
such a result as far less probable, if they were suffered to ramble
about in the streets, and to chaffer with their customers, than if they
were kept to sedate and diligent employment at home.

Having, with great warmth and earnestness, used these arguments, he
concluded, by plainly hinting to his wife that she had always been the
apologist of the tailor, in all their disputes; and that she could not
be so obstinately blind to the irrefragable reasoning he had urged, if
she were not influenced by her old hankering after this fellow, and did
not consult his interests in preference to those of her own family. Upon
this remark the old woman took fire, and, in spite of our presence, they
both had recourse to direct and the coarsest abuse.

The Brahmin did not, as I expected, join me in laughing at the scene we
had just witnessed; but, after some musing, observed: "There is much
truth in what each of these parties say. I blame them only for the
course they take towards each other. Their dispute is, in fact, of a
most frivolous and unmeaning character; for, if the father was to carry
his point, the girls would occasionally sell the productions of their
garden, and pay for making their clothes, or even buy them ready made.
Were the mother, on the other hand, to prevail, they would still
occasionally use their needles, and exercise their taste and skill in
sewing, spinning, knitting, and the like. Nay," added he, "if you had
not been so much engrossed with this angry and indecorous altercation,
you might have seen two of them at their needles, in an adjoining
apartment, while one was busy at work in the garden, and another up to
the elbows in the soap-suds--all so closely engaged in their several
pursuits, that they hardly seemed to know they were the subject of
discussion."

I told the Brahmin that a dispute, not unlike this, had taken place in
my own country, a few years since; some of our politicians contending
that agricultural labour was most conducive to the national wealth,
wh