bout, 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 woul