moment I say that she has not something of this
sort to anticipate or enjoy, that moment she is miserable. Wo to the
young man who becomes wedded for life to a creature of this
description. She may stay at home, for want of a better place, and she
may add one to the national census every ten years, but a companion, or
a mother, she cannot be.

I should dislike a moping melancholy creature as much as any man,
though were I tied to such a thing, I could live with her; but I never
could enjoy her society, nor but half of my own. He is but half a man
who is thus wedded, and will exclaim, in a literal sense, 'When shall I
be delivered from the body of this death?'

One hour, an _animal_ of this sort is moping, especially if nobody but
her husband is present; the next hour, if others happen to be present,
she has plenty of smiles; the next she is giggling or capering about;
and the next singing to the motion of a lazy needle, or perhaps weeping
over a novel. And this is called sentiment! _She_ is a woman of feeling
and good taste!

7. INDUSTRY.

Let not the individual whose eye catches the word _industry_, at the
beginning of this division of my subject, condemn me as degrading
females to the condition of mere wheels in a machine for money-making;
for I mean no such thing. There is nothing more abhorrent to the soul
of a sensible man than female _avarice_. The 'spirit of a man' may
sustain him, while he sees avaricious and miserly individuals among his
own sex, though the sight is painful enough, even here; but a female
miser, 'who can bear?'

Still if woman is intended to be a 'help meet,' for the other sex, I
know of no reason why she should not be so in physical concerns, as
well as mental and moral. I know not by what rule it is that many
resolve to remain for ever in celibacy, unless they believe their
companion can 'support' them, without labor. I have sometimes even
doubted whether any person who makes these declarations can be sincere.
Yet when I hear people, of both sexes, speak of poverty as a greater
calamity than death, I am led to think that this dread of poverty does
really exist among both sexes. And there are reasons for believing that
some females, bred in fashionable life, look forward to matrimony as a
state, of such entire exemption from care and labor, and of such
uninterrupted ease, that they would prefer celibacy and even death to
those duties which scripture, and reason, and common sense, appear