Which the reader will find very easy to read.
Mr Nicodemus Easy was a gentleman who lived down in Hampshire; he was
a married man, and in very easy circumstances. Most couples find it
very easy to have a family, but not always quite so easy to maintain
them. Mr Easy was not at all uneasy on the latter score, as he had no
children; but he was anxious to have them, as most people covet what
they cannot obtain. After ten years, Mr Easy gave it up as a bad job.
Philosophy is said to console a man under disappointment, although
Shakespeare asserts that it is no remedy for toothache; so Mr Easy
turned philosopher, the very best profession a man can take up, when
he is fit for nothing else; he must be a very incapable person indeed
who cannot talk nonsense. For some time, Mr Easy could not decide
upon what description his nonsense should consist of; at last he fixed
upon the rights of man, equality, and all that; how every person was
born to inherit his share of the earth, a right at present only
admitted to a certain length; that is, about six feet, for we all
inherit our graves and are allowed to take possession without dispute.
But no one would listen to Mr Easy's philosophy. The women would not
acknowledge the rights of men, whom they declared always to be in the
wrong; and, as the gentlemen who visited Mr Easy were all men of
property, they could not perceive the advantages of sharing with those
who had none. However, they allowed him to discuss the question, while
they discussed his port wine. The wine was good, if the arguments
were not, and we must take things as we find them in this world.
While Mr Easy talked philosophy, Mrs Easy played patience, and they
were a very happy couple, riding side by side on their hobbies, and
never interfering with each other. Mr Easy knew his wife could not
understand him, and therefore did not expect her to listen very
attentively; and Mrs Easy did not care how much her husband talked,
provided she was not put out in her game. Mutual forbearance will
always ensure domestic felicity.
There was another cause for their agreeing so well. Upon any disputed
question Mr Easy invariably gave it up to Mrs Easy, telling her that
she should have her own way and this pleased his wife; but, as Mr Easy
always took care, when it came to the point, to have his way, he was
pleased as well. It is true that Mrs Easy had long found out that she
did not have her own way long; but she was of an easy disposition, and
as, in nine cases out of ten, it was of very little consequence how
things were done, she was quite satisfied with his submission during
the heat of the argument. Mr Easy had admitted that she was right,
and if like all men he would do wrong, why, what could a poor woman
do? With a lady of such a quiet disposition, it is easy to imagine
that the domestic felicity of Mr Easy was not easily disturbed. But,
as people have observed before, there is a mutability in human
affairs. It was at the finale of the eleventh year of their marriage
that Mrs Easy at first complained that she could not enjoy her
breakfast. Mrs Easy had her own suspicions, everybody else considered
it past doubt, all except Mr Easy; he little "thought, good easy man,
that his greatness was ripening"; he had decided that to have an heir
was no Easy task, and it never came into his calculations, that there
could be a change in his wife's figure. You might have added to it,
subtracted from it, divided it, or multiplied it, but as it was a
zero, the result would be always the same. Mrs Easy also was not
quite sure--she believed it might be the case, there was no saying; it
might be a mistake, like that of Mrs Trunnion's in the novel, and,
therefore, she said nothing to her husband about the matter. At last
Mr Easy opened his eyes, and when, upon interrogating his wife, he
found out the astounding truth, he opened his eyes still wider, and
then he snapped his fingers and danced, like a bear upon hot plates,
with delight, thereby proving that different causes may produce
similar effects in two instances at one and the same time. The bear
dances from pain, Mr Easy from pleasure; and again, when we are
indifferent, or do not care for anything, we snap our fingers at it,
and when we are overjoyed, and obtain what we most care for, we also
snap our fingers. Two months after Mr Easy snapped his fingers, Mrs
Easy felt no inclination to snap hers, either from indifference or
pleasure, The fact was, that Mrs Easy's time was come, to undergo what
Shakespeare pronounces the pleasing punishment that women bears but
Mrs Easy, like the rest of her sex, declared "that all men were
liars," and most particularly poets.
But while Mrs Easy was suffering, Mr Easy was in ecstasies. He
laughed at pain, as all philosophers do when it is suffered by other
people, and not by themselves.
In due course of time, Mrs Easy presented her husband with a fine boy,
whom we present to the public as our hero.