"Then ye are right there, young chap. Keep so. If ye get a wife, ye'll see shoo'll be coming on wi' a family, and then that'll take all your brass. I' th' first place, ye'll want a house and furniture, and then there'll be rent and taxes, and your wife'll be always wanting summat for hersen or the bairns. And besides, just look how more flour ye'll want, and sugar, and soap, and candles. And look how many more potatoes ye'll want for them all to eat. Eh! but they're the animals 'at eats brass. They say that maggots eats cheese, and weevils eats cloathes, and mice eats corn; but wife and bairns eats brass, and it's t' brass as gets cheese, and cloathes, and corn. Nay, lad! have nowt to do wi' them soort o' cattle. And then--if th' wife takes to bonnets and gowns, ye're ruined directly. Nay, nay, grund is better nor a wife, and potatoes nor bairns. If ye want to save your brass and snap up a bit o' grund, ye munna be married." Job's end came as he was on one of his singing rounds. It is thought that some youngsters drugged his drink, in prank, at Silsden, and the consequences were a violent attack of English cholera. He got back to Ilkley, and crept into a barn belonging to the White Sheaf Inn; but the landlord seeing that his end was near, sent for the parish authorities, and he was moved to the Carlton workhouse, as he belonged to Burley. He died in the course of a few days, at the age of seventy-seven, and was buried in Burley churchyard, near Otley. FOOTNOTE: [19] "The Hermit of Rumbold's Moor." Bingley: Harrison (n.d.) NANCY NICHOLSON, THE TERMAGANT. Mrs. Nancy Nicholson[20] was born at Drax, in the county of York, on the 3rd day of May, 1785, and was the only child of the Rev. John Jackson, vicar of Drax, by his second wife. Mr. Jackson had a son by a former marriage, but he was taken by his mother's relatives into Cumberland; consequently the daughter, Nancy, was the only child at home, and from her infancy was indulged to a fault, and suffered to grow up without restraint, so that she soon became a terror to the other children in the school of which her father was the master.[21] It is curious that the child of a schoolmaster should have been suffered to grow to womanhood almost wholly without education; but such was the case. The following extract from a letter written by her when aged sixty-four shows how miserably her education had been neglected:--"Dear Mrs. Wilson,--Your letter just came in time as I whas thinking of letting my land but if John Harrison will come and we can a gree I ceep it on if not I shall let it Mr. Totton of Howden whants it and Taylors of Asselby also I Ceep all land and Hosses while I see him pray send him word to Come this week as I must have my Patays up and also my stakes wants thashing."