This affectionate behaviour of my wife's brought me a little out of
the vapours, and I began to consider what I was doing; I corrected
my wandering fancy, and began to argue with myself sedately what
business I had after threescore years, and after such a life of
tedious sufferings and disasters, and closed in so happy and easy a
manner; I, say, what business had I to rush into new hazards, and
put myself upon adventures fit only for youth and poverty to run
into?

With those thoughts I considered my new engagement; that I had a
wife, one child born, and my wife then great with child of another;
that I had all the world could give me, and had no need to seek
hazard for gain; that I was declining in years, and ought to think
rather of leaving what I had gained than of seeking to increase it;
that as to what my wife had said of its being an impulse from
Heaven, and that it should be my duty to go, I had no notion of
that; so, after many of these cogitations, I struggled with the
power of my imagination, reasoned myself out of it, as I believe
people may always do in like cases if they will: in a word, I
conquered it, composed myself with such arguments as occurred to my
thoughts, and which my present condition furnished me plentifully
with; and particularly, as the most effectual method, I resolved to
divert myself with other things, and to engage in some business
that might effectually tie me up from any more excursions of this
kind; for I found that thing return upon me chiefly when I was
idle, and had nothing to do, nor anything of moment immediately
before me. To this purpose, I bought a little farm in the county
of Bedford, and resolved to remove myself thither. I had a little
convenient house upon it, and the land about it, I found, was