ermined me to go thither again; and
that she found nothing hindered my going, but my being engaged to a wife
and children. She told me, that it was true she could not think of
parting with me; but as she was assured, that if she was dead it would
be the first thing I would do; so, as it seemed to her that the thing
was determined above, she would not be the only obstruction; for if I
thought fit, and resolved to go--Here she found me very intent upon her
words, and that I looked very earnestly at her; so that it a little
disordered her, and she stopped. I asked her why she did not go on, and
say out what she was going to say? But I perceived her heart was too
full, and some tears stood in her eyes: "Speak out, my dear," said I;
"are you willing I should go?"--"No," says she, very affectionately, "I
am far from willing: but if you are resolved to go," says she, "and
rather than I will be the only hindrance, I will go with you; for though
I think it a preposterous thing for one of your years, and in your
condition, yet if it must be," said she again, weeping, "I won't leave
you; for if it be of Heaven, you must do it; there is no resisting it;
and if Heaven makes 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 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 hazards 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_; and, in
a word, I conquered it; composed myself with