217. ’Care’! What care have I known!  I have been buffeted about by this powerful and vindictive Government; I have repeatedly had the fruit of my labour snatched away from me by it; but I had a partner that never frowned, that was never melancholy, that never was subdued in spirit, that never abated a smile, on these occasions, that fortified me, and sustained me by her courageous example, and that was just as busy and as zealous in taking care of the remnant as she had been in taking care of the whole; just as cheerful, and just as full of caresses, when brought down to a mean hired lodging, as when the mistress of a fine country house, with all its accompaniments; and, whether from her words or her looks, no one could gather that she regretted the change.  What ‘cares’ have I had, then?  What have I had worthy of the name of ‘cares’?

218.  And, how is it now?  How is it when the sixty-fourth year has come?  And how should I have been without this wife and these children?  I might have amassed a tolerable heap of money; but what would that have done for me?  It might have bought me plenty of professions of attachment; plenty of persons impatient for my exit from the world; but not one single grain of sorrow, for any anguish that might have attended my approaching end.  To me, no being in this world appears so wretched as an Old Bachelor.  Those circumstances, those changes in his person and in his mind, which, in the husband, increase rather than diminish the attentions to him, produce all the want of feeling attendant on disgust; and he beholds, in the conduct of the mercenary crew that generally surround him, little besides an eager desire to profit from that event, the approach of which, nature makes a subject of sorrow with him.

219.  Before I quit this part of my work, I cannot refrain from offering my opinion with regard to what is due from husband to wife, when the disposal of his property comes to be thought of.  When marriage is an affair settled by deeds, contracts, and lawyers, the husband, being bound beforehand, has really no will to make.  But where he has a will to make, and a faithful wife to leave behind him, it is his first duty to provide for her future well-being, to the utmost of his power.  If she brought him no money, she brought him her person; and by delivering that up to him, she established a claim to his careful protection of her to the end of her life.  Some men think, or act as if they thought, that, if a wife bring no money, and if the husband gain money by his business or profession, that money is his, and not hers, because she has not been doing any of those things for which the money has been received.  But is this way of thinking just?  By the marriage vow, the husband endows the wife with all his worldly goods; and not a bit too much is this, when she