Eva.
[Letter from Mrs. Courtney to Eva Van Arsdel.]
My Dear Child:—You place me in an embarrassing position in asking me to speak on a subject, when your parents have already declared their wishes.
Nevertheless, my dear, I can but remind you that you are the child of an higher than any earthly mother, and in an affair of this moment you should take counsel of our holy Church. Take your prayer-book and read her solemn service, and see what those marriage vows are that you think of taking. Are these to be taken lightly and unadvisedly?
I recollect, when I was a young girl, we used to read Sir Charles Grandison, and one passage in the model Harriet Byron's letters I copied into my scrap-book. Speaking of one who had proposed to her, she says:
"He seems to want the mind that I would have the man blessed with that I am to vow to love and honor. I purpose whenever I marry to make a very good, and even dutiful wife; must I not vow obedience, and shall I break my marriage vow? I would not, therefore, on any consideration, marry a man whose want of knowledge might make me stagger in the performance of my duty to him; who would, perhaps, command from caprice or want of understanding what I think unreasonable to be complied with."
I quote this because I think it is old fashioned good sense, in a respectable old English novel, worth a dozen of the modern school. To me, there is indicated in your description of Mr. Sydney, just that lack of what you would need in a husband, which would make difficult, perhaps impossible, the performance of your marriage vows. It is evident that his mind does not impress yours or control yours, and that there are no mental sympathies between you.
That a man is a good business man; that he is fitted to secure the rent or taxes of the house one lives in, and to pay one's bills, is not all. Think, my child, that this man, for whom you can "get up no enthusiasm," whose company wearies you, is the one whom you are proposing to take by the hand before God's altar, and solemnly promise that forsaking all others, you will keep only unto him, so long as you both shall live, to love, to honor, and to obey. Can you do it?
You say you can get up no enthusiasm for this man, yet you have a conception of a man for whom you could leave all things; whom you could love unto the death.