We have an English proverb that says, "He that would thrive, must ask
his wife." It was lucky for me that I had one as much dispos'd
to industry and frugality as myself. She assisted me cheerfully
in my business, folding and stitching pamphlets, tending shop,
purchasing old linen rags for the papermakers, etc., etc. We kept
no idle servants, our table was plain and simple, our furniture
of the cheapest. For instance, my breakfast was a long time bread
and milk (no tea), and I ate it out of a twopenny earthen porringer,
with a pewter spoon. But mark how luxury will enter families,
and make a progress, in spite of principle: being call'd one morning
to breakfast, I found it in a China bowl, with a spoon of silver!
They had been bought for me without my knowledge by my wife,
and had cost her the enormous sum of three-and-twenty shillings,
for which she had no other excuse or apology to make, but that she
thought her husband deserv'd a silver spoon and China bowl as well
as any of his neighbors. This was the first appearance of plate
and China in our house, which afterward, in a course of years,
as our wealth increas'd, augmented gradually to several hundred pounds
in value.
I had been religiously educated as a Presbyterian; and tho'
some of the dogmas of that persuasion, such as the eternal decrees
of God, election, reprobation, etc., appeared to me unintelligible,
others doubtful, and I early absented myself from the public
assemblies of the sect, Sunday being my studying day, I never was
without some religious principles.
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