If it be difficult to persuade the idle to be busy, it is likewise, as experience has taught me, not easy to convince the busy that it is better to be idle. When you shalla despair of stimulating sluggishness to motion, I hope you will turn your thoughts towards the means of stilling the bustle of pernicious activity.

I am the unfortunate husband of a “buyer of bargains.” My wife has somewhere heard, that a good housewife “never” has any thing to “purchase when it is wanted.” This maxim is often in her mouth, and always in her head. She is not one of those philosophical talkers that speculate without practice, and learn sentences of wisdom only to repeat them; she is always making additions to her stores; she never looks intob a broker's shop, but she spies something that may be wanted some time; and it is impossible to make her pass the door of a house where she hears “Goods selling by auction.”

Whatever she thinks cheap, she holds it the duty of an oeconomist to buy;c in consequence of this maxim, we are incumbered on every side with useless lumber. The servants can scarcely creep to theird beds thro' the chests and boxes that surround them. The carpenter is employed once a weeke in building closets, fixing cupboards, and fastening shelves, and my house has the appearance of a ship stored for a voyage to the colonies.

I had often observed that advertisements set her on fire, and therefore, pretending to emulate her laudable frugality, I forbad the news-paper to be taken any longer; but my precaution is vain; I know not by what fatality, or by what confederacy, every catalogue of “genuine furniture” comes to her hand, every advertisement of a warehouse newly opened is in her pocket-book, and she knows before any of her neighbours, when the stock of any man “leaving off trade” is to be “sold cheap for ready money.”

Such intelligence, is to my dear one the Siren's song. No engagement, no duty, no interest can witholdf her from a sale, from which she always returns congratulating herself upon her dexterity at a bargain; the porter lays down his burdeng in the hall, she displays her new acquisitions, and spends the rest of the day in contriving where they shall be put.

As she cannot bear to have any thing uncomplete, one purchase necessitates another; she has twenty feather-beds more than she can use, and a lateh sale has supplied her with a proportionable number of Witneyi blankets,1 a large roll of linnen for sheets, and five quilts for every bed, which she bought because the seller told her, that if she would clear his hands he would let her have a bargain.

Thus by hourly encroachments my habitation is made narrower and narrower; the dining-room is so crouded with tables that dinner scarcely can be served; the parlour is decorated with so many piles of china, that I dare not stepj within the door; at every turn of the stairs I have a clock, and half the windows of the upper floors are darkened that shelves may be set before them.

This, however, might be borne, if she would gratify her own inclinations without opposing mine. But I who am idle am luxurious, and she condemns me to live upon salt provision. She knows the loss of buying in small quantities, we have therefore whole hogs and quarters of oxen. Part of our meat is tainted before it is eaten, and part is thrown away because it is spoiled; but she persists in her system, and will never buy any thing by single pennyworths.

The common vice of those who are still grasping at more, is to neglect that which they already possess; but from this failing my charmerk is free. It is the great care of her life that the pieces of beef should be boiled in the order in which they are bought; that the secondl bag of pease shall not be opened till the first are eaten; that every feather-bed shall be lain on in its turn; that the carpets should be taken out of the chests once a month and brushed, and the rolls of linnen opened now and then before the fire. She is daily enquiring after the best traps for mice; and keeps the rooms always scented by fumigations to destroy the moths. She employs workmen, from time to time, to adjust six clocks that never go, and clean five jacks that rust in the garret; and a woman in the next alley lives by scouring the brass and pewter, which, are only laid up to tarnish again.m

She is always imagining some distant time in which she shall use whatever she accumulates; she has four lookingglasses which she cannot hang up in her house, but which will be handsome in more lofty rooms; and pays rent for the place of a vast copper in some warehouse, because when we live in the country we shall brew our own beer.

Of this life I have long been weary, but know not how to change it; all the married men whom I consult advise me to have patience; but some old bachelorsn are of opinion, that since she loves sales so well, she should haveo a sale of her own, and I have, I think, resolved to open her hoards, and advertise an auction.