My dear Madam, is not that just what you did, yourself, after having turned off three or four fascinating young sinners as good as James any day? Don’t make us believe that you are sorry for it now!
‘Is it possible,’ says Dr. Theophrastus, who is himself a stanch Hopkinsian divine, and who is at present recovering from his last grand effort on Natural and Moral Ability,—‘is it possible that you are going to let Mary forget that poor young man and marry Dr. H.? That will never do in the world!’
Dear Doctor, consider what would have become of you, if some lady at a certain time had not had the sense and discernment to fall in love with the man who came to her disguised as a theologian.
‘But he’s so old!’ says Aunt Maria.
Not at all. Old? What do you mean? Forty is the very season of ripeness,—the very meridian of manly lustre and splendour.
‘But he wears a wig.’
My dear Madam, so did Sir Charles Grandison, and Lovelace, and all the other fine fellows of those days: the wig was the distinguishing mark of a gentleman.
No,—spite of all you may say and declare, we do insist that our Doctor is a very proper and probable subject for a young lady to fall in love with.
If women have one weakness more marked than another, it is towards veneration. They are born worshippers,—makers of silver shrines for some divinity or other, which, of course, they always think fell straight down from heaven.