THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 2JJ 



might be so, with very many who vex and toil 

 themselves to get what they have no need of. 

 Can any man charge God, that he hath not given 

 him enough to make his life happy? No, doubt- 

 less ; for nature Is content with a little. And yet 

 you shall hardly meet with a man that complains 

 not of some want ; though he indeed wants 

 nothing but his will, it may be, nothing but his 

 will of his poor neighbor, for not worshipping or 

 not flattering him ; and thus, when we might be 

 happy and quiet, we create trouble to ourselves. 

 I have heard of a man that was angry with himself 

 because he was no taller ; and of a woman that 

 broke her looking-glass because it would not show 

 her face to be as young and handsome as her next 

 neighbor's was. And I knew another, to whom 

 God had given health and plenty, but a wife that 

 nature had made peevish, and her husband's 

 riches had made purse-proud, and must, because 

 she was rich, and for no other virtue, sit in the 

 highest pew in the church, which being denied 

 her, she engaged her husband into a contention 

 for it, and at last into a lawsuit with a dogged 

 neighbor, who was as rich as he, and had a wife 

 as peevish and purse-proud as the other : and 

 this lawsuit begot higher oppositions, and action- 

 able words, and more vexations and lawsuits ; for 

 you must remember that both were rich, and must 

 therefore have their wills. Well, this wilful, purse- 

 proud lawsuit lasted during the life of the first 

 husband ; after which his wife vexed and chid, and 



