210.  The cares and troubles of the married life are many; but, are those of the single life few?  Take the farmer, and it is nearly the same with the tradesman; but, take the farmer, for instance, and let him, at the age of twenty-five, go into business unmarried.  See his maid servants, probably rivals for his smiles, but certainly rivals in the charitable distribution of his victuals and drink amongst those of their own rank:  behold their guardianship of his pork-tub, his bacon rack, his butter, cheese, milk, poultry, eggs, and all the rest of it:  look at their care of all his household stuff, his blankets, sheets, pillow-cases, towels, knives and forks, and particularly of his crockery ware, of which last they will hardly exceed a single cart-load of broken bits in the year.  And, how nicely they will get up and take care of his linen and other wearing apparel, and always have it ready for him without his thinking about it!  If absent at market, or especially at a distant fair, how scrupulously they will keep all their cronies out of his house, and what special care they will take of his cellar, more particularly that which holds the strong beer!  And his groceries and his spirits and his wine (for a bachelor can afford it), how safe these will all be!  Bachelors have not, indeed, any more than married men, a security for health; but if our young farmer be sick, there are his couple of maids to take care of him, to administer his medicine, and to perform for him all other nameless offices, which in such a case are required; and what is more, take care of every thing down stairs at the same time, especially his desk with the money in it!  Never will they, good-humoured girls as they are, scold him for coming home too late; but, on the contrary, like him the better for it; and if he have drunk a little too much, so much the better, for then he will sleep late in the morning, and when he comes out at last, he will find that his men have been so hard at work, and that all his animals have been taken such good care of!

211.  Nonsense! a bare glance at the thing shows, that a farmer, above all men living, can never carry on his affairs with profit without a wife, or a mother, or a daughter, or some such person; and mother and daughter imply matrimony.  To be sure, a wife would cause some trouble, perhaps, to this young man.  There might be the midwife and nurse to gallop after at midnight; there might be, and there ought to be, if called for, a little complaining of late hours; but, good God! what are these, and all the other troubles that could attend a married life; what are they, compared to the one single circumstance of the want of a wife at your bedside during one single night of illness!  A nurse! what is a nurse to do for you?  Will she do the things that a wife will do?  Will she watch your looks and your half-uttered wishes?  Will she use the urgent persuasions so often necessary to save life in such cases?  Will she, by her acts, convince you that it is not a toil, but a delight, to break her rest for your sake?  In short, now it is that you find that what the women themselves say is strictly true, namely, that without wives, men are poor helpless mortals.