last scene, she cannot make
her _teeth_ abandon their character. She may, and must, suffer the slice
to linger on the plate, and must make the supply slow, in order to fill
up the time; but when she _does_ bite, she cannot well disguise what
nature has taught her to do; and you may be assured, that if her jaws
move in slow time, and if she rather _squeeze_ than bite the food; if
she so deal with it as to leave you in doubt as to whether she mean
finally to admit or reject it; if she deal with it thus, set her down as
being, in her very nature, incorrigibly lazy. Never mind the pieces of
needle-work, the tambouring, the maps of the world made by her needle.
Get to see her at work upon a mutton chop, or a bit of bread and cheese;
and, if she deal quickly with these, you have a pretty good security for
that activity, that _stirring_ industry, without which a wife is a
burden instead of being a help. And, as to _love_, it cannot live for
more than a month or two (in the breast of a man of spirit) towards a
lazy woman.

105. Another mark of industry is, a _quick step_, and a somewhat _heavy
tread_, showing that the foot comes down with a _hearty good will_; and
if the body lean a little forward, and the eyes keep steadily in the
same direction, while the feet are going, so much the better, for these
discover _earnestness_ to arrive at the intended point. I do not like,
and I never liked, your _sauntering_, soft-stepping girls, who move as
if they were perfectly indifferent as to the result; and, as to the
_love_ part of the story, whoever expects ardent and lasting affection
from one of these sauntering girls, will, when too late, find his
mistake: the character runs the same all the way through; and no man
ever yet saw a sauntering girl, who did not, when married, make a
_mawkish_ wife, and a cold-hearted mother; cared very little for either
by husband or children; and, of course, having no store of those
blessings which are the natural resources to apply to in sickness and in
old age.

106. _Early-rising_ is another mark of industry; and though, in the
higher situations of life, it may be of no importance in a mere
pecuniary point of view, it is, even there, of importance in other
respects; for it is, I should imagine, pretty difficult to keep love
alive towards a woman who _never sees the dew_, never beholds the
_rising sun_, and who constantly comes directly from a reeking bed to
the breakfast table, and there chews a