ABSTRACT
WHEN a French girl is intended for the wife of. a merchant, The is carefully instructed in arithmetic, after The leaves the convent, where The is usually taught little more than to count her beads, After me is married the ads as her husband’s first clerk, and passes the whole day in his counting-house. Some advantages arise from this-practice; since a French woman, if her husband dies, is capable of carrying on his business till her children are of a proper age to succeed to it; and in the mean time the knows exactly the state of his affairs. Whereas, the wife of an English merchant, sometimes from being entirely ignorant of his real situation, indulges herself in a mode of living which hastens on his ruin, and receives like a thunder-stroke the intelligence that her riches were a dream, and that her husband is a bankrupt.
