An ambitious young lady stopped to see me on her way to New York. She was about to sail for Europe, and she told me, confidentially, that she was engaged to marry a clergyman of this country, and that she "might marry him," if she failed to get a certain position she hoped for in Paris.
I could not refrain from saying, "Do not marry," and she took it that I was either averse to matrimony or to the young man. Such supposition was incorrect. I simply disliked to see any man irrevokably tied to a woman who took him only because she could not get something else.
I explained this to the girl, but it did no good. She said I was "sentimental and not at all practical." I confessed to a little sentiment on the subject of wedlock, and refrained from adding that I should rather be truthful than practical, but I told her that, if she had accepted her lover, conditionally, her course was entirely honorable, and then, to relieve the heaviness of the conversation, I repeated these lines, which she laughed at very moderately indeed:
"I, Pegg Pudding, promise thee, William Crickett,
That I will hold thee for mine own dear lily,
Whilst I have a head in mine eye and a face on my nose,
A mouth in my tongue and all that a woman should have,
From the crown of my foot to the sole of my head."
The attention of my guest flagged a little and, when I completed the stanza, she confessed she was thinking of a Philadelphia girl whose resolution she much admired. During a sojourn in Europe, this girl had refused sixty-five offers of marriage—I hope I have the number exactly right—having determined to marry no one of lower rank than a prince.
I sped my guest to New York and Europe, and after her departure no ghost needed to come from the grave to tell me why marriage is so often a failure. We hear this thing and that thing given as a reason. Responsibility enough is to be laid at the door of men, but let women confess a share in the desecration of the sacred ordinance. Is it possible to think of a marriage resulting well that does not begin in truth, and continue in truth?