able to hold out the first day’s journey.  I water them at every brook I meet, and have only a care they have so much way to go before I come to my inn, as will digest the water in their bellies.  My unwillingness to rise in a morning gives my servants leisure to dine at their ease before they set out; for my own part, I never eat too late; my appetite comes to me in eating, and not else; I am never hungry but at table.

Some of my friends blame me for continuing this travelling humour, being married and old.  But they are out in’t; ’tis the best time to leave a man’s house, when he has put it into a way of continuing without him, and settled such order as corresponds with its former government.  ’Tis much greater imprudence to abandon it to a less faithful housekeeper, and who will be less solicitous to look after your affairs.

The most useful and honourable knowledge and employment for the mother of a family is the science of good housewifery.  I see some that are covetous indeed, but very few that are good managers.  ’Tis the supreme quality of a woman, which a man ought to seek before any other, as the only dowry that must ruin or preserve our houses.  Let men say what they will, according to the experience I have learned, I require in married women the economical virtue above all other virtues; I put my wife to’t, as a concern of her own, leaving her, by my absence, the whole government of my affairs.  I see, and am vexed to see, in several families I know, Monsieur about noon come home all jaded and ruffled about his affairs, when Madame is still dressing her hair and tricking up herself, forsooth, in her closet:  this is for queens to do, and that’s a question, too:  ’tis ridiculous and unjust that the laziness of our wives should be maintained with our sweat and labour.  No man, so far as in me lie, shall have a clearer, a more quiet and free fruition of his estate than I. If the husband bring matter, nature herself will that the wife find the form.

As to the duties of conjugal friendship, that some think to be impaired by these absences, I am quite of another- opinion.  It is, on the contrary, an intelligence that easily cools by a too frequent and assiduous companionship.  Every strange woman appears charming, and we all find by experience that being continually together is not so pleasing as to part for a time and meet again.  These interruptions fill me with fresh affection towards my family, and render my house more pleasant to me.  Change warms my appetite to the one and then to the other.  I know that the arms of friendship are long enough to reach from the one end of the world to the other, and especially this, where there is a continual communication of offices that rouse the obligation and remembrance.  The Stoics say that there is so great connection and relation amongst the sages, that he who dines in France nourishes his companion in Egypt; and that whoever does but hold out his finger, in what part