101. INDUSTRY. By industry, I do not mean merely laboriousness, merely labour or activity of body, for purposes of gain or of saving; for there may be industry amongst those who have more money than they know well what to do with: and there may be lazy ladies, as well as lazy farmers' and tradesmen's wives. There is no state of life in which industry in the wife is not necessary to the happiness and prosperity of the family, at the head of the household affairs of which she is placed. If she be lazy, there will be lazy servants, and, which is a great deal worse, children habitually lazy: every thing, however necessary to be done, will be put off to the last moment: then it will be done badly, and, in many cases, not at all: the dinner will be too late; the journey or the visit will be tardy; inconveniencies of all sorts will be continually arising: there will always be a heavy arrear of things unperformed; and this, even amongst the most wealthy of all, is a great curse; for, if they have no business imposed upon them by necessity, they make business for themselves; life would be unbearable without it: and therefore a lazy woman must always be a curse, be her rank or station what it may.
102. But, who is to tell whether a girl will make an industrious woman? How is the purblind lover especially, to be able to ascertain whether she, whose smiles and dimples and bewitching lips have half bereft him of his senses; how is he to be able to judge, from any thing that he can see, whether the beloved object will be industrious or lazy? Why, it is very difficult: it is a matter that reason has very little to do with; but there are, nevertheless, certain outward and visible signs, from which a man, not wholly deprived of the use of his reason, may form a pretty accurate judgment as to this matter. It was a story in Philadelphia, some years ago, that a young man, who was courting one of three sisters, happened to be on a visit to her, when all the three were present, and when one said to the others, 'I wonder where our needle is.' Upon which he withdrew, as soon as was consistent with the rules of politeness, resolved never to think more of a girl who possessed a needle only in partnership, and who, it appeared, was not too well informed as to the place where even that share was deposited.
103. This was, to be sure, a very flagrant instance of a want of industry; for, if the third part of the use of a needle satisfied her when single, it was reasonable to anticipate that marriage would banish that useful implement altogether. But such instances are seldom suffered to come in contact with the eyes and ears of the lover, to disguise all defects from whom is the great business, not only of the girl herself, but of her whole family. There are, however, certain outward signs, which, if attended to with care, will serve as pretty sure guides. And, first, if you find the tongue lazy, you may be nearly certain that the hands and feet are the same. By laziness of the tongue I do not mean silence; I do not mean an absence of talk, for that is, in most cases, very good; but, I mean, a slow and soft utterance; a sort of sighing out of the words instead of speaking them; a sort of letting the sounds fall out, as if the party were sick at stomach. The pronunciation of an industrious person is generally quick, distinct, and the voice, if not strong, firm at the least. Not masculine; as feminine as possible; not a croak nor a bawl, but a quick, distinct, and sound voice. Nothing is much more disgusting than what the sensible country people call a maw-mouthed woman. A maw-mouthed man is bad enough: he is sure to be a lazy fellow: but, a woman of this description, in addition to her laziness, soon becomes the most disgusting of mates. In this whole world nothing is much more hateful than a female's under jaw, lazily moving up and down, and letting out a long string of half-articulate sounds. It is impossible for any man, who has any spirit in him, to love such a woman for any length of time.
104. Look a little, also, at the labours of the teeth, for these correspond with those of the other members of the body, and with the operations of the mind. 'Quick at meals, quick at work,' is a saying as old as the hills, in this, the most industrious nation upon earth; and never was there a truer saying. But fashion comes in here, and decides that you shall not be quick at meals; that you shall sit and be carrying on the affair of eating for an hour, or more. Good God! what have I not suffered on this account! However, though she must sit as long as the rest, and though she must join in the performance (for it is a real performance) unto the end of the 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 about, without appetite, the choicest morsels of human food. A man might, perhaps, endure this for a month or two, without being disgusted; but that is ample allowance of time. And, as to people in the middle rank of life, where a living and a provision for children is to be sought by labour of some sort or other, late rising in the wife is certain ruin; and, never was there yet an early-rising wife, who had been a late-rising girl. If brought up to late rising, she will like it; it will be her habit; she will, when married, never want excuses for indulging in the habit; at first she will be indulged without bounds; to make a change afterwards will be difficult; it will be deemed a wrong done to her; she will ascribe it to diminished affection; a quarrel must ensue, or, the husband must submit to be ruined, or, at the very least, to see half the fruit of his labour snored and lounged away. And, is this being rigid? Is it being harsh; is it being hard upon women? Is it the offspring of the frigid severity of age? It is none of these: it arises from an ardent desire to promote the happiness, and to add to the natural, legitimate, and salutary influence, of the female sex. The tendency of this advice is to promote the preservation of their health; to prolong the duration of their beauty; to cause them to be beloved to the last day of their lives; and to give them, during the whole of those lives, weight and consequence, of which laziness would render them wholly unworthy.
107. FRUGALITY. This means the contrary of extravagance. It does not mean stinginess; it does not mean a pinching of the belly, nor a stripping of the back; but it means an abstaining from all unnecessary expenditure, and all unnecessary use, of goods of any and of every sort; and a quality of great importance it is, whether the rank in life be high or low. Some people are, indeed, so rich, they have such an overabundance of money and goods, that how to get rid of them would, to a looker-on, seem to be their only difficulty. But while the inconvenience of even these immense masses is not too great to be overcome by a really extravagant woman, who jumps with joy at a basket of strawberries at a guinea an ounce, and who would not give a straw for green peas later in the year than January; while such a dame would lighten the bags of a loan-monger, or shorten the rent-roll of half-a-dozen peerages amalgamated into one possession, she would, with very little study and application of her talent, send a nobleman of ordinary estate to the poor-house or the pension list, which last may be justly regarded as the poor-book of the aristocracy. How many noblemen and gentlemen, of fine estates, have been ruined and degraded by the extravagance of their wives! More frequently by their own extravagance, perhaps; but, in numerous instances, by that of those whose duty it is to assist in upholding their stations by husbanding their fortunes.
108. If this be the case amongst the opulent, who have estates to draw upon, what must be the consequences of a want of frugality in the middle and lower ranks of life? Here it must be fatal, and especially amongst that description of persons whose wives have, in many cases, the receiving as well as the expending of money. In such a case, there wants nothing but extravagance in the wife to make ruin as sure as the arrival of old age. To obtain security against this is very difficult; yet, if the lover be not quite blind, he may easily discover a propensity towards extravagance. The object of his addresses will, nine times out of ten, not be the manager of a house; but she must have her dress, and other little matters under her control. If she be costly in these; if, in these, she step above her rank, or even to the top of it; if she purchase all she is able to purchase, and prefer the showy to the useful, the gay and the fragile to the less sightly and more durable, he may be sure that the disposition will cling to her through life. If he perceive in her a taste for costly food, costly furniture, costly amusements; if he find her love of gratification to be bounded only by her want of means; if he find her full of admiration of the trappings of the rich, and of desire to be able to imitate them, he may be pretty sure that she will not spare his purse, when once she gets her hand into it; and, therefore, if he can bid adieu to her charms, the sooner he does it the better.
109. The outward and visible and vulgar signs of extravagance are rings, broaches, bracelets, buckles, necklaces, diamonds (real or mock), and, in short, all the hard-ware which women put upon their persons. These things may be proper enough in palaces, or in scenes resembling palaces; but, when they make their appearance amongst people in the middle rank of life, where, after all, they only serve to show that poverty in the parties which they wish to disguise; when the nasty, mean, tawdry things make their appearance in this rank of life, they are the sure indications of a disposition that will always be straining at what it can never attain. To marry a girl of this disposition is really self-destruction. You never can have either property or peace. Earn her a horse to ride, she will want a gig: earn the gig, she will want a chariot: get her that, she will long for a coach and four: and, from stage to stage, she will torment you to the end of her or your days; for, still there will be somebody with a finer equipage than you can give her; and, as long as this is the case, you will never have rest. Reason would tell her, that she could never be at the top; that she must stop at some point short of that; and that, therefore, all expenses in the rivalship are so much thrown away. But, reason and broaches and bracelets do not go in company: the girl who has not the sense to perceive that her person is disfigured, and not beautified, by parcels of brass and tin (for they are generally little better) and other hard-ware, stuck about her body; the girl that is so foolish as not to perceive, that, when silks and cottons and cambrics, in their neatest form, have done their best, nothing more is to be done; the girl that cannot perceive this is too great a fool to be trusted with the purse of any man.
110. CLEANLINESS. This is a capital ingredient; for there never yet was, and there never will be, love of long duration, sincere and ardent love, in any man, towards a 'filthy mate.' I mean any man in England, or in those parts of America where the people have descended from the English. I do not say, that there are not men enough, even in England, to live peaceably and even contentedly, with dirty, sluttish women; for, there are some who seem to like the filth well enough. But what I contend for is this: that there never can exist, for any length of time, ardent affection in any man towards a woman who is filthy either in her person, or in her house affairs. Men may be careless as to their own persons; they may, from the nature of their business, or from their want of time to adhere to neatness in dress, be slovenly in their own dress and habits; but, they do not relish this in their wives, who must still have charms; and charms and filth do not go together.