"If you will permit me to say so, without offense, Charley," returned the lady, with sudden determination of manner, "I fear you did not display your usual tact on the occasion, and that you, perhaps, took offense at circumstances resulting from the embarrassment of our friends, rather than from any intention to be impolite to you. Ladies are not always equally well, equally self-possessed, equally in company-mood, or company-dress. I don't know what might not befall any of us, were we not judged of, by our friends rather by our general manner to them, than by any little peculiarities, of which we may be ourselves wholly unconscious at the time."
If you are as much impressed as I was, upon first perusing them, with the following sentences from Sir Humphrey Davy's pen, you will require no apology from me, for transcribing them here.
"I envy no quality of mind or intellect in others—not of genius, power, wit, or fancy; but, if I could choose what would be most delightful, and, I believe, most useful, to me, I should prefer a firm religious belief, to every other blessing, for it makes life a discipline of goodness, creates new hope, when earthly hopes vanish, and throws over the decay, the destruction, of existence, the most gorgeous of all light; awakens life, even in death, and, from decay, calls up beauty and divinity; makes an instrument of torture and shame the ladder of ascent to Paradise; and, far above all combination of earthly hopes, calls up the most delightful visions—palms and amaranths, the gardens of the blessed, the security of everlasting joys, where the sensualist and the skeptic view only gloom, decay, and annihilation."
With these sublime words, my dear nephews, I bid you, affectionately,
Adieu!
Henry Lunettes.
LETTER XII.
CHOICE OF COMPANIONS AND FRIENDS—SELECTION OF A PURSUIT IN LIFE—COURTSHIP—MARRIAGE—HOUSEKEEPING—PECUNIARY MATTERS, ETC.