she watch your looks and your half-uttered wishes? Will she use
the urgent persuasions so often necessary to save life in such cases?
Will she, by her acts, convince you that it is not a toil, but a
delight, to break her rest for your sake? In short, now it is that you
find that what the women themselves say is strictly true, namely, that
without wives, _men are poor helpless mortals_.

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 al