sort, we must, of course, in some ranks and circumstances of life, include the intercourse amongst friends and neighbours, which may frequently and reasonably call the husband from his home:  but what are we to think of the husband who is in the habit of leaving his own fire-side, after the business of the day is over, and seeking promiscuous companions in the ale or the coffee house?  I am told that, in France, it is rare to meet with a husband who does not spend every evening of his life in what is called a caffe; that is to say, a place for no other purpose than that of gossipping, drinking and gaming.  And it is with great sorrow that I acknowledge that many English husbands indulge too much in a similar habit.  Drinking clubs, smoking clubs, singing clubs, clubs of odd-fellows, whist clubs, sotting clubs:  these are inexcusable, they are censurable, they are at once foolish and wicked, even in single men; what must they be, then, in husbands; and how are they to answer, not only to their wives, but to their children, for this profligate abandonment of their homes; this breach of their solemn vow made to the former, this evil example to the latter?

171.  Innumerable are the miseries that spring from this cause.  The expense is, in the first place, very considerable.  I much question whether, amongst tradesmen, a shilling a night pays the average score; and that, too, for that which is really worth nothing at all, and cannot, even by possibility, be attended with any one single advantage, however small.  Fifteen pounds a year thus thrown away, would amount, in the course of a tradesman’s life, to a decent fortune for a child.  Then there is the injury to health from these night adventures; there are the quarrels, there is the vicious habit of loose and filthy talk; there are the slanders and the back-bitings; there is the admiration of contemptible wit, and there are the scoffings at all that is sober and serious.

172.  And does the husband who thus abandons his wife and children imagine that she will not, in some degree at least, follow his example?  If he do, he is very much deceived.  If she imitate him even in drinking, he has no great reason to complain; and then the cost may be two shillings the night instead of one, equal in amount to the cost of all the bread wanted in the family, while the baker’s bill is, perhaps, unpaid.  Here are the slanderings, too, going on at home; for, while the husbands are assembled, it would be hard if the wives were not to do the same; and the very least that is to be expected is, that the tea-pot should keep pace with the porter-pot or grog-glass.  Hence crowds of female acquaintances and intruders, and all the consequent and inevitable squabbles which form no small part of the torment of the life of man.