158.  Besides, the man and wife will live on cheaper diet and drink than a servant will live.  Thousands, who would never have had beer in their house, have it for the servant, who will not live without it.  However frugal your wife, her frugality is of little use, if she have one of these inmates to provide for.  Many a hundred thousand times has it happened that the butcher and the butter-man have been applied to solely because there was a servant to satisfy.  You cannot, with this clog everlastingly attached to you, be frugal, if you would:  you can save nothing against the days of expense, which are, however, pretty sure to come.  And why should you bring into your house a trouble like this; an absolute annoyance; a something for your wife to watch, to be a constraint upon her, to thwart her in her best intentions, to make her uneasy, and to sour her temper?  Why should you do this foolish thing?  Merely to comply with corrupt fashion; merely from false shame, and false and contemptible pride?  If a young man were, on his marriage, to find any difficulty in setting this ruinous fashion at defiance, a very good way would be to count down to his wife, at the end of every week, the amount of the expense of a servant for that week, and request her to deposit it in her drawer.  In a short time she would find the sum so large, that she would be frightened at the thoughts of a servant; and would never dream of one again, except in case of absolute necessity, and then for as short a time as possible.

159.  But the wife may not be able to do all the work to be done in the house.  Not able!  A young woman not able to cook and wash, and mend and make, and clean the house and make the bed for one young man and herself, and that young man her husband too, who is quite willing (if he be worth a straw) to put up with cold dinner, or with a crust; to get up and light her fire; to do any thing that the mind can suggest to spare her labour, and to conduce to her convenience!  Not able to do this?  Then, if she brought no fortune, and he had none, she ought not to have been able to marry:  and, let me tell you, young man, a small fortune would not put a servant-keeping wife upon an equality with one who required no such inmate.

160.  If, indeed, the work of a house were harder than a young woman could perform without pain, or great fatigue; if it had a tendency to impair her health or deface her beauty; then you might hesitate:  but, it is not too hard, and it tends to preserve health, to keep the spirits buoyant, and, of course, to preserve beauty.  You often hear girls, while scrubbing or washing, singing till they are out of breath; but never while they are at what they call working at the needle.  The American wives are most exemplary in this respect.  They have none of that false pride, which prevents thousands in England from doing that which interest, reason, and even their own inclination would prompt them to