ne of your years, and in your condition, yet, if it must be,"
said she, again weeping, "I would not leave you; for if it be of Heaven
you must do it, there is no resisting it; and if Heaven make it your duty
to go, He will also make it mine to go with you, or otherwise dispose of
me, that I may not obstruct it."

This affectionate behaviour of my wife's brought me a little out of the
vapours, and I began to consider what I was doing; I corrected my
wandering fancy, and began to argue with myself sedately what business I
had after threescore years, and after such a life of tedious sufferings
and disasters, and closed in so happy and easy a manner; I, say, what
business had I to rush into new hazards, and put myself upon adventures
fit only for youth and poverty to run into?

With those thoughts I considered my new engagement; that I had a wife,
one child born, and my wife then great with child of another; that I had
all the world could give me, and had no need to seek hazard for gain;
that I was declining in years, and ought to think rather of leaving what
I had gained than of seeking to increase it; that as to what my wife had
said of its being an impulse from Heaven, and that it should be my duty
to go, I had no notion of that; so, after many of these cogitations, I
struggled with the power of my imagination, reasoned myself out of it, as
I believe people may always do in like cases if they will: in a word, I
conquered it, composed myself with such arguments as occurred to my
thoughts, and which my present condition furnished me plentifully with;
and particularly, as the most effectual method, I resolved to divert
myself with other things, and to engage in some business that might
effectually tie me up from any more excursions of this kind; for I found
that thing return upon me chiefly when I was idle, and had nothing to do,
nor anything of moment immediately before me. To this purpose, I bought
a little farm in the county of Bedford, and resolved to remove myself
thither. I had a little convenient house upon it, and the land about it,
I found, was capable of great improvement; and it was many ways suited to
my inclination, which delighted in cultivating, managing, planting, and
improving of land; and particularly, being an inland country, I was
removed from conversing among sailors and things relating to the remote
parts of the world. I went down to my farm, settled my family, bought
ploughs, harrows, a cart, waggo