As children came the living indoors became harder, and the work out of doors still more laborious.
If a farmer can put away fifty pounds a year, after paying his rent and expenses, if he can lay by a clear fifty pounds of profit, he thinks himself a prosperous man.

If this farmer, after forty years of saving, should chance to be succeeded by a son as thrifty, when, he too has carried on the same process for another twenty years, then the family may be, for village society, wealthy, with three or even four thousand pounds, besides goods and gear.

This is supposing all things favourable, and men of some ability, making the most of their opportunities.

Now reverse the process.

When children came, as said before, our hard-working farmer found the living indoors harder, and the labour without heavier.