do.  They work, not from necessity; not from compulsion of any sort; for their husbands are the most indulgent in the whole world.  In the towns they go to the market, and cheerfully carry home the result:  in the country, they not only do the work in the house, but extend their labours to the garden, plant and weed and hoe, and gather and preserve the fruits and the herbs; and this, too, in a climate far from being so favourable to labour as that of England; and they are amply repaid for these by those gratifications which their excellent economy enables their husbands to bestow upon them, and which it is their universal habit to do with a liberal hand.

161.  But did I practise what I am here preaching?  Aye, and to the full extent.  Till I had a second child, no servant ever entered my house, though well able to keep one; and never, in my whole life, did I live in a house so clean, in such trim order, and never have I eaten or drunk, or slept or dressed, in a manner so perfectly to my fancy, as I did then.  I had a great deal of business to attend to, that took me a great part of the day from home; but, whenever I could spare a minute from business, the child was in my arms; I rendered the mother’s labour as light as I could; any bit of food satisfied me; when watching was necessary, we shared it between us; and that famous GRAMMAR for teaching French people English, which has been for thirty years, and still is, the great work of this kind, throughout all America, and in every nation in Europe, was written by me, in hours not employed in business, and, in great part, during my share of the night-watchings over a sick, and then only child, who, after lingering many months, died in my arms.

162.  This was the way that we went on:  this was the way that we began the married life; and surely, that which we did with pleasure no young couple, unendowed with fortune, ought to be ashamed to do.  But she may be ill; the time may be near at hand, or may have actually arrived, when she must encounter that particular pain and danger of which you have been the happy cause!  Oh! that is quite another matter!  And if you now exceed in care, in watchings over her, in tender attention to all her wishes, in anxious efforts to quiet her fears; if you exceed in pains and expense to procure her relief and secure her life; if you, in any of these, exceed that which I would recommend, you must be romantic indeed!  She deserves them all, and more than all, ten thousand times told.  And now it is that you feel the blessing conferred by her economy.  That heap of money, which might have been squandered on, or by, or in consequence of, an useless servant, you now have in hand wherewith to procure an abundance of that skill and that attendance of which she stands in absolute need; and she, when restored to you in smiling health, has the just pride to reflect, that she may have owed her life and your happiness to the effects of her industry.