d ready
to lie down and despair, the very sight of his family rouses him again,
and he flies to his business with a new vigour; 'I must follow my
business,' says he, 'or we must all starve, my poor children must
perish;' in a word, he that is not animated to diligence by the very
sight and thought of his wife and children being brought to misery and
distress, is a kind of a deaf adder that no music will charm, or a
Turkish mute that no pity can move: in a word, he is a creature not to
be called human, a wretch hardened against all the passions and
affections that nature has furnished to other animals; and as there is
no rhetoric of use to such a kind of man as that, so I am not talking to
such a one, he must go among the incurables; for, where nature cannot
work, what can argument assist?

FOOTNOTES:

[19] [Now, as in Defoe's time, a common observer is apt to be impressed
with the idea, that expenses, with a large part of the community, exceed
gains. Certainly, this is true at all times with a certain portion of
society, but probably at no time with a large portion. There is a
tendency to great self-deception in all such speculations; and no one
ever thinks of bringing them to the only true test--statistical facts.
The reader ought, therefore, to pay little attention to the complaints
in the text, as to an increased extravagance in the expenses of
tradesmen, and only regard the general recommendation, and the reasons
by which that recommendation is enforced, to live within income.]

[20] [There can be little doubt, that the calculation of this
experienced gentleman is grossly inconsistent with the truth.
Nevertheless, this part of Defoe's work contains some curious traits of
manners, which are probably not exaggerated]

[21] [Defoe, from his having been employed for several years in Scotland
at the time of the Union, must have well known how rare was then the use
of white or wheaten bread in that country.]

CHAPTER XI

OF THE TRADESMAN'S MARRYING TOO SOON

It was a prudent provision which our ancestors made in the indenture of
tradesmen's apprentices, that they should not contract matrimony during
their apprenticeship; and they bound it with a penalty that was then
thought sufficient. However, custom has taken off the edge of it since;
namely, that they who did thus contract matrimony should forfeit their
indentures, that is to say, should lose the benefit of their whole
service, and not be made free.