o him after the following
manner:--"My dear, since I have been your wife, I have observed great
abuses and disorders in your family: your servants are mutinous and
quarrelsome, and cheat you most abominably; your cookmaid is in a
combination with your butcher, poulterer, and fishmonger; your butler
purloins your liquor, and the brewer sells you hogwash; your baker
cheats both in weight and in tale; even your milkwoman and your
nursery-maid have a fellow feeling; your tailor, instead of shreds,
cabbages whole yards of cloth; besides, leaving such long scores, and
not going to market with ready money forces us to take bad ware of the
tradesmen at their own price. You have not posted your books these ten
years. How is it possible for a man of business to keep his affairs even
in the world at this rate? Pray God this Hocus be honest; would to God
you would look over his bills, and see how matters stand between Frog
and you. Prodigious sums are spent in this lawsuit, and more must be
borrowed of scriveners and usurers at heavy interest. Besides, my
dear, let me beg of you to lay aside that wild project of leaving
your business to turn lawyer, for which, let me tell you, Nature never
designed you. Believe me, these rogues do but flatter, that they may
pick your pocket; observe what a parcel of hungry ragged fellows live by
your cause; to be sure they will never make an end of it. I foresee this
haunt you have got about the courts will one day or another bring your
family to beggary. Consider, my dear, how indecent it is to abandon
your shop and follow pettifoggers; the habit is so strong upon you, that
there is hardly a plea between two country esquires, about a barren acre
upon a common, but you draw yourself in as bail, surety, or solicitor."
John heard her all this while with patience, till she pricked his
maggot, and touched him in the tender point. Then he broke out into
a violent passion: "What, I not fit for a lawyer? let me tell you, my
clod-pated relations spoiled the greatest genius in the world when they
bred me a mechanic. Lord Strutt, and his old rogue of a grandsire, have
found to their cost that I can manage a lawsuit as well as another." "I
don't deny what you say," replied Mrs. Bull, "nor do I call in question
your parts; but, I say, it does not suit with your circumstances;
you and your predecessors have lived in good reputation among your
neighbours by this same clothing-trade, and it were madness to leave it