are tremendous in America, compared with what they are in England.  My wife was, at one time, very much afraid of thunder and lightning; and as is the feeling of all such women, and, indeed, all men too, she wanted company, and particularly her husband, in those times of danger.  I knew well, of course, that my presence would not diminish the danger; but, be I at what I might, if within reach of home, I used to quit my business and hasten to her, the moment I perceived a thunder storm approaching.  Scores of miles have I, first and last, run on this errand, in the streets of Philadelphia!  The Frenchmen, who were my scholars, used to laugh at me exceedingly on this account; and sometimes, when I was making an appointment with them, they would say, with a smile and a bow, ’Sauve la tonnerre toujours, Monsieur Cobbett.’

168.  I never dangled about at the heels of my wife; seldom, very seldom, ever walked out, as it is called, with her; I never ’went a walking’ in the whole course of my life; never went to walk without having some object in view other than the walk; and, as I never could walk at a slow pace, it would have been hard work for her to keep up with me; so that, in the nearly forty years of our married life, we have not walked out together, perhaps, twenty times.  I hate a dangler, who is more like a footman than a husband.  It is very cheap to be kind in trifles; but that which rivets the affections is not to be purchased with money.  The great thing of all, however, is to prove your anxiety at those times of peril to her, and for which times you, nevertheless, wish.  Upon those occasions I was never from home, be the necessity for it ever so great:  it was my rule, that every thing must give way to that.  In the year 1809, some English local militiamen were flogged, in the Isle of Ely, in England, under a guard of Hanoverians, then stationed in England.  I, reading an account of this in a London newspaper, called the COURIER, expressed my indignation at it in such terms as it became an Englishman to do.  The Attorney General, Gibbs, was set on upon me; he harassed me for nearly a year, then brought me to trial, and I was, by Ellenborough, Grose, Le Blanc, and Bailey, sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in Newgate, to pay a fine to the king of a thousand pounds, and to be held in heavy bail for seven years after the expiration of the imprisonment!  Every one regarded it as a sentence of death.  I lived in the country at the time, seventy miles from London; I had a farm on my hands; I had a family of small children, amongst whom I had constantly lived; I had a most anxious and devoted wife, who was, too, in that state, which rendered the separation more painful ten-fold.  I was put into a place amongst felons, from which I had to rescue myself at the price of twelve guineas a week for the whole of the two years.  The King, poor man! was, at the close of my imprisonment, not in a condition to receive the thousand pounds; but his son, the present king, punctually received it ’in his name and behalf;’ and he keeps it still.