I used sometimes to wonder why he did not get his breakfast himself, as I once knew a mechanic to do, who had a very indolent wife; but he seemed not to think it possible. There is such a universal devotion to a particular array of table and table cloths, platters and plates, knives and forks, pots and kettles, and cups and saucers, in New England, that it seems hardly to have entered the minds of people that they can have a comfortable breakfast without them.

But as I have already hinted, my friend Sidney has contrived to get along by his perseverance, and in spite of his wife, who still clings to her bed in the morning; and he is quite a thriving farmer. He has very little affection, it is true, for his wife or his children-having made money his great object.

your

You

Were I to be asked what a man should do placed in Samuel Sidney's circumstances, I would say"Get own breakfast for a few mornings. will not suffer—nor will your employer-if you eat from four to eight ounces of good bread, with perhaps a handful of berries or an apple or two; and such a breakfast may be made without the din of pots and kettles." But I seem to forget that I am not writing a book for young husbands.

It is true that breakfast should be, as a general rule, a social occasion, in which much pleasant and agreeable conversation should be elicited; and it

will be a work of self-denial for a husband to eat his meal in a solitary manner. But he would not probably be compelled to do so long. This natural punishment of the young wife would probably soon work her reformation. She would not be willing her husband should go without his warm breakfast very long. Or if she had become so thoroughly divested of old prejudices, and so completely reformed in dietetic practice, as to believe that a cold or rather a cool breakfast was better for him and everybody else than a hot one, still she would soon get sick of eating alone, when a little more effort would give to herself and her children the pleasure and the benefit of her husband's company.

I might mention a hundred cases which would show the young wife the importance of early rising, and the dismal consequences which often flow from the neglect of it. But it cannot, surely, be necessary.

CHAPTER XVIII.

INDUSTRY.

An anecdote. Motives to industry. Bible examples of this virtue.

I was acquainted, a few years since, with an old gentleman and lady, both of whom were over ninety years of age. They had lived together seventy years; and yet their whole course had been one of the most untiring industry. They came together, at marriage, nearly as poor as John Bunyan and his wife-that is, almost without knife, fork or spoon-and yet by hard labor and careful management, they have educated-I will not say well educated-a large family of children, and acquired considerable property.

They were, I have said, now over ninety years of age. And yet they were still at work; the gentleman on his shoemaker's bench, and the lady at her wheel. "But why do you continue to spin at your age, and in your easy circumstances?" said a neighbor to her one day. "Ah," said she, “it is as much my duty to strain every nerve I have, to

lay up property, as it is to go to meeting; and that, not only as a duty to my husband and to society, but to God."

Now this old lady was partly correct, and partly in the wrong. It is indeed true that neither age nor circumstances should prevent our laboring all we can, without injury to our health, and without interference with other duties. But there are a great many kinds of labor in this world. Besides this, there are a great many duties devolving upon us not commonly called labor-duties to ourselves, to husbands, and wives, and children, and neighbors, and friends. He who should labor solely to amass property, to the neglect of other duties, would be very far from taking a course acceptable to God.

I rejoice to find persons of ninety years of age, working on and resolyed to work on to the end of life; although I am sorry to see them actuated by so low and unworthy a motive as the desire to lay up property. I should be glad to have every person, especially every young wife, feel that every "nerve should be strained," as the old lady expressed it, in doing one thing or another.

Spinning is so far out of date, that it might be useless for me to recommend it to the young wife to betake herself to her wheel any part of the day. And yet very few kinds of exercise within doors, are better for many of the class of females for whom

I am writing, than spinning wool, &c., on an old fashioned wheel.

Cookery, when performed on rational principles, is also a valuable employment in point of health; and so are nearly all the various employments which, sixty years ago, devolved on our female community.

But every female is bound to attend to the means of improving her health, as well as of cultivating her own mind and heart. She owes the same duties, moreover, to those around her, especially to her own children. She has duties to perform to the sick and to the well-to the young and to the aged; duties even to domestic animals. Very few of these duties are favorable to the laying up of much property, and some are opposed to it. So that while we commend industry-of the most untiring kind, too-we would neither commend nor recommend strong efforts to lay up property.

Let her, however to repeat what I have already said-be constantly employed. Let everything be done, too, orderly and methodically. Let her be punctual, eminently so, in the performance of all her engagements. Thus will she strengthen the hands and encourage the heart of her husband, and set an example that she will not be ashamed to have her children follow, and hand down to future and distant generations. Let her be industrious for