"It is a wives occupacion to winow al maner of cornes, to make malte, wash & wring, to make hey, to shere corne, & in time of neede to helpe her husbande to fyll the mucke wayne or donge carte, dryve the plough, to lode hay corne & such other. Also to go or ride to the market to sell butter, chese, mylke, egges, chekens, kapons, hennes, pygges, gees & al maner of corne. And also to bye al maner of necessary thinges belonging to a household, & to make a true rekening & accompt to her husband what she hath receyved & what she hathe payed. And yf the husband go to market to bye or sell as they ofte do, he then to shew his wife in lyke maner. For if one of them should use to disceive the other, he disceyveth himselfe, & he is not lyke to thryve, & therfore they must be true ether to other." * * * * * I come next to Master Tusser,--poet, farmer, chorister, vagabond, happily dead at last, and with a tomb whereon some wag wrote this:-- "Tusser, they tell me, when thou wert alive, Thou teaching thrift, thyself could never thrive; So, like the whetstone, many men are wont To sharpen others when themselves are blunt." I cannot help considering poor Tusser's example one of warning to all poetically inclined farmers. He was born at a little village in the County of Essex. Having a good voice, he came early in life to be installed as singer at Wallingford College; and showing here a great proficiency, he was shortly after impressed for the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral. Afterward he was for some time at Eton, where he had the ill-luck to receive some fifty-four stripes for his shortcomings in Latin; thence he goes to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he lives "in clover." It appears that he had some connections at Court, through whose influence he was induced to go up to London, where he remained some ten years,--possibly as singer,--but finally left in great disgust at the vices of the town, and commenced as farmer in Suffolk,-- "To moil and to toil With loss and pain, to little gain, To cram Sir Knave";-- from which I fancy that he had a hard landlord, and but little sturdy resolution. Thence he goes to Ipswich, or its neighborhood, with no better experience. Afterward we hear of him with a second wife at Dereham Abbey; but his wife is young and sharp-tempered, and his landlord a screw: so he does not thrive here, but goes to Norwich and commences chorister again; but presently takes another farm in Fairstead, Essex, where it would seem he eked out a support by collecting tithes for the parson. But he says,-- "I spyed, if parson died, (All hope in vain,) to hope for gain I might go dance." Possibly he did go dance: he certainly left the tithe-business, and after settling in one more home, from which he ran to escape the plague, we find him returned to London, to die,--where he was buried in the Poultry.