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obtain it early, a man may be obliged to sacrifice some idle habits, some vani- 

 tiea, some frivolous cravings. The acquisition of a future home should be 

 an object of greater pride than riding and shooting, smoking, chewing, drink- 

 ing or dressing. To this object his time should be devoted by an iron rule, 

 varied only by the exercise of a rational discretion. If a man goes to a shovr 

 on Monday, fritters away his time on Tuesday, because it storms or looks like 

 a storm, goes to a political caucus or some jubilee on Wednesday, and in- 

 volves himself in a law-suit on Thursday, I humbly opine he has only Friday 

 and Saturday left to devote to his duties. But I pledge you my word that 

 such a man, so desperately driven, (for human nature cannot stand everything) 

 will have a pain in the head, or a pain in the toe, or be sick all over, on Fri- 

 day or Saturday. It may be asked, should a man have no leisure — should ha 

 be always a drudge? Oh, no. He should, however, regulate his own affairs 

 before he regulates the affairs of the nation ; he should take care of his own 

 independence, before he crows much on the independence of the nation. I 

 fancy a commonwealth will not perish, whose every citizen is independent, 

 and his affairs well ordered and thrifty. A man's business and family should 

 be of primary importance. Pleasures, pastimes, festivals, neither profitable 

 perhaps, nor instrucive, should be of secondary importance. Duties at home 

 should be observed first, calls abroad last. Leisure must be earned berore it 

 is enjoyed. " Fly pleasures and they will follow you." 



It is no less important that a man's family should be guided by a rational 

 policy, than that he should be so governed himself. If a man's wife grasps 

 everythiag she craves, irrespective of ability to pay for it — if she seeks to 

 deck the head instead of store the brain — if she prizes the ring upon the fin- 

 ger more than the muscle of the arm, and the delicacy of complexion which 

 attends idle effeminacy, rather than the ruddy bloom of health which cheerful 

 exertion yields — if she supposes that distinction and respectability consist in 

 drees and complexion, and furniture, and idleness, and not in a hearty devo- 

 tion to every womanly duty, in doors or out of doors, at home or abroad, if 

 such are the views of the wife and family, the man will never prosper. If a 

 man have such a wife, he may as well leap from the bridge, or fly to Califor- 

 nia. His nose is on the grindstone, and he will never get it off. He is 

 doomed forever, to debt, embarrassment and despair. He may as well pitch 

 to some familiar tune the lamentation in Job, "Man is born unto trouble, as 

 the sparks fly upward," and habitually hum it as his morning melody and 

 his evening chant. I think I hear a murmur from some fair captious hearer, 

 "he would make us all slaves." Far from it. Be a woman, instead of a 

 piece of animated millinery. Be a woman, instead of a bauble. Be a crea- 

 ture of capacity, of thought, of action, of life. Follow out these ideas, and 

 your children will not prove mere danglers, your boys popinjays, your girls 

 toys ; but you will leave behind you, living, active, sentient beings, to cheer 

 and animate the world, instead of drones to burden it. 



I would not deride either beauty or accomplishment. What I detest ifl, 

 that on the altar of vanity, a home shall be sacrificed, a husband rendered 

 bankrupt, the best capacities of our nature destroyed. The truth cannot be 



