"A wife to a man is...a necessary evil"

In 1824, twenty-five-year-old lawyer Henry Closson offered the following heartwarming sentiment on marriage.  Six years later, he married twenty-three-year-old Emily Whitney of Marlboro, Vermont.  One wonders if the lady was aware of her prince charming's sentiment towards the bonds of matrimony - or perhaps in time Closson's views had changed?

Henry Closson to Henry Eddy, September 1, 1824
Henry Eddy Papers, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library
I am neither married, nor, what is still worse (better), have that state in expectancy.  Mr. Mosley tells me you are in a like condition.  Are bachelors in Illinois taxed?  If they are, husbands are more grievously taxed.  A wife to a man, is, what lawyers are to a community, a necessary evil.  Recollect the words of Moore, “The choosing of a wife is like putting a hand into a sack where are a hundred vipers and one eel, it is a hundred to one if, in the choice, we do not get a viper.”