carry on a trade
for the support of her family and children, when he perhaps may never
show his head again.

But let the man's case be what it will, I think he can never call it a
hard shift to let his wife into an acquaintance with his business, if
she desires it, and is fit for it; and especially in case of mortality,
that she may not be left helpless and friendless with her children when
her husband is gone, and when, perhaps, her circumstances may require
it.

I am not for a man setting his wife at the head of his business, and
placing himself under her like a journeyman, like a certain
china-seller, not far from the East India House, who, if any customers
came into the shop that made a mean, sorry figure, would leave them to
her husband to manage and attend them; but if they looked like quality,
and people of fashion, would come up to her husband, when he was showing
them his goods, putting him by with a 'Hold your tongue, Tom, and let me
talk.' I say, it is not this kind, or part, that I would have the
tradesman's wife let into, but such, and so much, of the trade only as
may be proper for her, not ridiculous, in the eye of the world, and may
make her assisting and helpful, not governing to him, and, which is the
main thing I am at, such as should qualify her to keep up the business
for herself and children, if her husband should be taken away, and she
be left destitute in the world, as many are.

Thus much, I think, it is hard a wife should not know, and no honest
tradesman ought to refuse it; and above all, it is a great pity the
wives of tradesmen, who so often are reduced to great inconvenience for
want of it, should so far withstand their own felicity, as to refuse to
be thus made acquainted with their business, by which weak and foolish
pride they expose themselves, as I have observed, to the misfortune of
throwing the business away, when they may come to want it, and when the
keeping it up might be the restoring of their family, and providing for
their children.

For, not to compliment tradesmen too much, their wives are not all
ladies, nor are their children all born to be gentlemen. Trade, on the
contrary, is subject to contingencies; some begin poor, and end rich;
others, and those very many, begin rich, and end poor: and there are
innumerable circumstances which may attend a tradesman's family, which
may make it absolutely necessary to preserve the trade for his children,
if possible; the doing wh