I was ‘always in spirits;’ that nothing pulled me down; and the truth is, that, throughout nearly forty years of troubles, losses, and crosses, assailed all the while by more numerous and powerful enemies than ever man had before to contend with, and performing, at the same time, labours greater than man ever before performed; all those labours requiring mental exertion, and some of them mental exertion of the highest order; the truth is, that, throughout the whole of this long time of troubles and of labours, I have never known a single hour of real anxiety; the troubles have been no troubles to me; I have not known what lowness of spirits meaned; have been more gay, and felt less care, than any bachelor that ever lived.  ‘You are always in spirits, Cobbett!’ To be sure; for why should I not? Poverty I have always set at defiance, and I could, therefore, defy the temptations of riches; and, as to home and children, I had taken care to provide myself with an inexhaustible store of that ‘sobriety,’ which I am so strongly recommending my reader to provide himself with; or, if he cannot do that, to deliberate long before he ventures on the life-enduring matrimonial voyage.  This sobriety is a title to trust-worthiness; and this, young man, is the treasure that you ought to prize far above all others.  Miserable is the husband, who, when he crosses the threshold of his house, carries with him doubts and fears and suspicions.  I do not mean suspicions of the fidelity of his wife, but of her care, frugality, attention to his interests, and to the health and morals of his children.  Miserable is the man, who cannot leave all unlocked, and who is not sure, quite certain, that all is as safe as if grasped in his own hand.  He is the happy husband, who can go away, at a moment’s warning, leaving his house and his family with as little anxiety as he quits an inn, not more fearing to find, on his return, any thing wrong, than he would fear a discontinuance of the rising and setting of the sun, and if, as in my case, leaving books and papers all lying about at sixes and sevens, finding them arranged in proper order, and the room, during the lucky interval, freed from the effects of his and his ploughman’s or gardener’s dirty shoes.  Such a man has no real cares; such a man has no troubles; and this is the sort of life that I have led.  I have had all the numerous and indescribable delights of home and children, and, at the same time, all the bachelor’s freedom from domestic cares:  and to this cause, far more than to any other, my readers owe those labours, which I never could have performed, if even the slightest degree of want of confidence at home had ever once entered into my mind.