174.  The way to avoid the sad consequences of which I have been speaking is to begin well:  many a man has become a sottish husband, and brought a family to ruin, without being sottishly inclined, and without liking the gossip of the ale or coffee house.  It is by slow degrees that the mischief is done.  He is first inveigled, and, in time, he really likes the thing; and, when arrived at that point, he is incurable.  Let him resolve, from the very first, never to spend an hour from home, unless business, or, at least, some necessary and rational purpose demand it.  Where ought he to be, but with the person whom he himself hath chosen to be his partner for life, and the mother of his children?  What other company ought he to deem so good and so fitting as this?  With whom else can he so pleasantly spend his hours of leisure and relaxation?  Besides, if he quit her to seek company more agreeable, is not she set at large by that act of his?  What justice is there in confining her at home without any company at all, while he rambles forth in search of company more gay than he finds at home?

175.  Let the young married man try the thing; let him resolve not to be seduced from his home; let him never go, in one single instance, unnecessarily from his own fire-side. Habit is a powerful thing; and if he begin right, the pleasure that he will derive from it will induce him to continue right.  This is not being ‘tied to the apron-strings,’ which means quite another matter, as I shall show by-and-by.  It is being at the husband’s place, whether he have children or not.  And is there any want of matter for conversation between a man and his wife?  Why not talk of the daily occurrences to her, as well as to any body else; and especially to a company of tippling and noisy men?  If you excuse yourself by saying that you go to read the newspaper, I answer, buy the newspaper, if you must read it:  the cost is not half of what you spend per day at the pot-house; and then you have it your own, and may read it at your leisure, and your wife can read it as well as yourself, if read it you must.  And, in short, what must that man be made of, who does not prefer sitting by his own fire-side with his wife and children, reading to them, or hearing them read, to hearing the gabble and balderdash of a club or a pot-house company!

176.  Men must frequently be from home at all hours of the day and night.  Sailors, soldiers, merchants, all men out of the common track of labour, and even some in the very lowest walks, are sometimes compelled by their affairs, or by circumstances, to be from their homes.  But what I protest against is, the habit of spending leisure hours from home, and near to it; and doing this without any necessity, and by choice:  liking the next door, or any house in the same street, better than your own.  When absent from necessity, there is no wound given to the heart of the wife;