第12章 CHAPTER X

Of John Bull's second Wife, and the good Advice that she gave him.*John quickly got the better of his grief, and, seeing that neither his constitution nor the affairs of his family, could permit him to live in an unmarried state, he resolved to get him another wife; a cousin of his last wife's was proposed, but John would have no more of the breed. In short, he wedded a sober country gentlewoman, of a good family and a plentiful fortune, the reverse of the other in her temper; not but that she loved money, for she was saving, and applied her fortune to pay John's clamorous debts, that the unfrugal method of his last wife, and this ruinous lawsuit, had brought him into. One day, as she had got her husband in a good humour, she talked to him after the following manner:--"My dear, since I have been your wife, I have observed great abuses and disorders in your family: your servants are mutinous and quarrelsome, and cheat you most abominably; your cookmaid is in a combination with your butcher, poulterer, and fishmonger; your butler purloins your liquor, and the brewer sells you hogwash; your baker cheats both in weight and in tale; even your milkwoman and your nursery-maid have a fellow feeling; your tailor, instead of shreds, cabbages whole yards of cloth; besides, leaving such long scores, and not going to market with ready money forces us to take bad ware of the tradesmen at their own price. You have not posted your books these ten years.

How is it possible for a man of business to keep his affairs even in the world at this rate? Pray God this Hocus be honest; would to God you would look over his bills, and see how matters stand between Frog and you. Prodigious sums are spent in this lawsuit, and more must be borrowed of scriveners and usurers at heavy interest.

Besides, my dear, let me beg of you to lay aside that wild project of leaving your business to turn lawyer, for which, let me tell you, Nature never designed you. Believe me, these rogues do but flatter, that they may pick your pocket; observe what a parcel of hungry ragged fellows live by your cause; to be sure they will never make an end of it. I foresee this haunt you have got about the courts will one day or another bring your family to beggary. Consider, my dear, how indecent it is to abandon your shop and follow pettifoggers; the habit is so strong upon you, that there is hardly a plea between two country esquires, about a barren acre upon a common, but you draw yourself in as bail, surety, or solicitor."John heard her all this while with patience, till she pricked his maggot, and touched him in the tender point. Then he broke out into a violent passion: "What, I not fit for a lawyer? let me tell you, my clod-pated relations spoiled the greatest genius in the world when they bred me a mechanic. Lord Strutt, and his old rogue of a grandsire, have found to their cost that I can manage a lawsuit as well as another." "I don't deny what you say," replied Mrs. Bull, "nor do I call in question your parts; but, I say, it does not suit with your circumstances; you and your predecessors have lived in good reputation among your neighbours by this same clothing-trade, and it were madness to leave it off. Besides, there are few that know all the tricks and cheats of these lawyers. Does not your own experience teach you how they have drawn you on from one term to another, and how you have danced the round of all the courts, still flattering you with a final issue; and, for aught I can see, your cause is not a bit clearer than it was seven years ago." "I will be hanged," says John, "if I accept of any composition from Strutt or his grandfather; I'll rather wheel about the streets an engine to grind knives and scissors. However, I'll take your advice, and look over my accounts."* A new Parliament: the aversion of a Tory House of Commons to war.