nerally provided before the wife be
installed: I am well aware of all this; but knowing, from long and
attentive observation, that it is the great bane of the marriage life;
the great cause of that penury, and of those numerous and tormenting
embarrassments, amidst which conjugal felicity can seldom long be kept
alive, I give the advice, and state the reasons on which it was founded.

156. In London, or near it, a maid servant cannot be kept at an expense
so low as that of _thirty pounds a year_; for, besides her wages, board
and lodging, there must be a _fire_ solely for her; or she must sit with
the husband and wife, hear every word that passes between them, and
between them and their friends; which will, of course, greatly add to
the pleasures of their fire-side! To keep her tongue still would be
impossible, and, indeed, unreasonable; and if, as may frequently happen,
she be prettier than the wife, she will know how to give the suitable
interpretation to the looks which, to a next to a certainty, she will
occasionally get from him, whom, as it were in mockery, she calls by the
name of '_master_.' This is almost downright bigamy; but this can never
do; and, therefore, she must have a _fire to herself_. Besides the blaze
of coals, however, there is another sort of _flame_ that she will
inevitably covet. She will by no means be sparing of the coals; but,
well fed and well lodged, as _she_ will be, whatever you may be, she
will naturally sigh for the fire of love, for which she carries in her
bosom a match always ready prepared. In plain language, you have a man
to keep, a part, at least, of every week; and the leg of lamb, which
might have lasted you and your wife for three days, will, by this
gentleman's sighs, be borne away in one. Shut the door against this
intruder; out she goes herself; and, if she go empty-handed, she is no
true Christian, or, at least, will not be looked upon as such by the
charitable friend at whose house she meets the longing soul, dying
partly with love and partly with hunger.

157. The cost, altogether, is nearer fifty pounds a year than thirty.
How many thousands of tradesmen and clerks, and the like, who might have
passed through life without a single embarrassment, have lived in
continual trouble and fear, and found a premature grave, from this very
cause, and this cause alone! When I, on my return from America, in 1800,
lived a short time in Saint James's Street, following my habit of ear