“No,” said Rolfe; “how should I know.”
“Well, I mean that sometimes, when I have seen some of our Kentuck' gals, I've felt right funny;—felt as if somebody was drawing a briar over me. Now, if you call that love, I have been in love.”
“Well, I think you have,” said Rolfe, “and that you have felt one of its strongest symptoms. Do you know any body that you would marry?”
“No, not a living soul; nor, for the matter of that, a dead one either. I marry! what for? To be always toating a wife through the woods, or across the swamps, to keep some damn'd red skin from taking her hair off? Wouldn't she see rough times? Fool who?—She'd be all sorts of a gal who catches me.”
Rolfe could not resist laughing, and observed:—“You have queer ideas of wedlock, Earth.”
“Oh! I don't know,” said Earth, “a wife is a queer thing; and getting one is like taking a varment out of a hollow;—you don't know until you have got it into your hand, what sort of a thing it is.”
“That may be the case sometimes, Earth; but how delightful it must be to have for a companion, a lovely woman, whose every thought is virtuous and innocent; and then to have that woman so devoted to you, that her only pleasure consists in doing those things which make you happy.”
“That may be very fine, Rolfe; but I know that there ain't sich a gal in these parts, and I don't believe sich a thing ever happens.”
“Yes, Earth, it happens, when persons of congenial minds and dispositions are united, before they reach that scheming period of life in which interest sways all their actions.”
“Oh! now, Rolfe, you are talking too pretty for me; I don't know what it all means. I can only say this, that if I was to marry, I would pick a wife as I would a horse, and be governed altogether by looks.”