Such a
girl, my friend, is not to be bestowed without much care and reflection."
"By the mass! to use one of thine own favorite oaths, I wonder to hear
thee talk thus!--thou, whom I knew a hot-blooded Italian, jealous as a
Turk, and maintaining at thy rapier's point that women were like the steel
of thy sword, so easily tarnished by rust, or evil breath, or neglect,
that no father or brother could be easy on the score of honor, until the
last of his name was well wedded, and that, too, to such as the wisdom of
her advisers should choose! I remember thee once saying thou couldst not
sleep soundly till thy sister was a wife or a nun."
"This was the language of boyhood and thoughtless youth, and bitterly
rebuked have I been for having used it. I wived a beauteous and noble
virgin, de Willading; but I much fear that, while my fair conduct in her
behalf won her respect and esteem, I was too late to win her love. It is a
fearful thing to enter on the solemn and grave ties of married life,
without enlisting in the cause of happiness the support of the judgment,
the fancy, the tastes, with the feelings that are dependent on them, and,
more than all, those wayward inclinations, whose workings too often baffle
human foresight.
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