IV INTRODUCTION. 



Occupation is the most solid basis of real 

 happiness, and the enjoyments of life — even 

 if accompanied with all the means of luxury 

 — are insipid vs^ithout it. In married life, 

 the husband, if he be not a man of inde- 

 pendence, has importunate cares to occupy 

 him in his trade or profession ; but the 

 domestic duties are exclusively confined to 

 the wife, and if she counts among the num- 

 ber an attention to a little rural economy, 

 she will find it not only add largely to the 

 comforts of her family, but derive from it 

 also a source of pleasure to herself, of which 

 no " town-lady" can form an idea. 



" Our business in life is to be happy," 

 and the true way of making it so is to be 

 contented with a moderate income ; but, in 

 acquiring this, it is not perhaps so much 

 the art of gaining it, as that of judiciously 

 spending it, that we have to learn, and it is 

 only in well regulated families, conducted 



