t is
better to be idle. When you shall despair of stimulating sluggishness to
motion, I hope you will turn your thoughts towards the means of stilling
the bustle of pernicious activity.

I am the unfortunate husband of a _buyer of bargains_. My wife has
somewhere heard, that a good housewife _never_ has any thing to
_purchase when it is wanted_. This maxim is often in her mouth, and
always in her head. She is not one of those philosophical talkers that
speculate without practice; and learn sentences of wisdom only to repeat
them: she is always making additions to her stores; she never looks into
a broker's shop, but she spies something that may be wanted some time;
and it is impossible to make her pass the door of a house where she
hears _goods selling by auction_.

Whatever she thinks cheap, she holds it the duty of an economist to buy;
in consequence of this maxim, we are encumbered on every side with
useless lumber. The servants can scarcely creep to their beds through
the chests and boxes that surround them. The carpenter is employed once
a week in building closets, fixing cupboards, and fastening shelves; and
my house has the appearance of a ship stored for a voyage to the
colonies.

I had often observed that advertisements set her on fire; and therefore,
pretending to emulate her laudable frugality, I forbade the newspaper to
be taken any longer; but my precaution is vain; I know not by what
fatality, or by what confederacy, every catalogue of _genuine furniture_
comes to her hand, every advertisement of a warehouse newly opened, is
in her pocketbook, and she knows before any of her neighbours when the
stock of any man _leaving off trade_ is to be _sold cheap for ready
money_.

Such intelligence is to my dear-one the Syren's song. No engagement, no
duty, no interest, can withhold her from a sale, from which she always
returns congratulating herself upon her dexterity at a bargain; the
porter lays down his burden in the hall; she displays her new
acquisitions, and spends the rest of the day in contriving where they
shall be put.

As she cannot bear to have any thing uncomplete, one purchase
necessitates another; she has twenty feather-beds more than she can use,
and a late sale has supplied her with a proportionable number of Witney
blankets, a large roll of linen for sheets, and five quilts for every
bed, which she bought because the seller told her, that if she would
clear his hands he would let her have a