CHAPTER I.

The description of the Family of

Wakefield, in which a kindred

Likeness prevails as well of
Minds as of Persons.

I WAS ever of opinion that the honest man, who married and brought up a large family, did more service than he who continued single, and only talked of population. From this motive, I had scarce taken orders a year, before I began to think seriously of matrimony, and chose my wife as she did her weddinggown, not for a fine glossy surface, but for such qualities as would wear well. To do her justice, she was a goodnatured, notable woman; and as for breeding, there were few country ladies who could show more. She could read any English book without much spelling; but for pickling, preserving, and cookery, none could excel her. She prided herself also upon being an excellent contriver in housekeeping; though I could never find that we grew richer with all her contrivances.

However, we loved each other tenderly, and our fondness increased as we grew old. There was, in fact, nothing that could make us angry with the world, or each other. We had an elegant house, situate in a fine country, and

as were poor. We had no
revolutions to fear, nor fa-
tigues to undergo; all our
adventures were by the fire.
side, and all our migrations
from the blue bed to the
brown.

As we lived near the road,
we often had the traveller of
stranger visit us, to taste our
gooseberry-wine, for which
we had great reputation;
and I profess, with the vera-
city of an historian, that I
never knew one of them find
fault with it. Our cousins

too, even to the fortieth remove, all remembered their affinity, without any help from the herald's office, and came very frequently to see us. Some of them did us no great honour by these claims of kindred, as we had the blind, the maimed, and the halt amongst the number. However, my wife always insisted that as they were the same "flesh and blood," they should sit with us at the same table; so that if we had not very rich, we generally had very happy friends about us; for this remark will hold good through life, that the poorer the guest, the better pleased he ever is with being treated; and as some men gaze with admiration at the colors of a tulip, or the wing of a butterfly, so I was by nature an admirer of happy human faces. However, when bad chavery be a person of we desired to get rid of, upov