for she would have certainly been
ducked. It was well she never went on thin ice, (she didn't venture till
the other girls had tried it,) she would have broken through. Her
caution, I must say, was of the right kind; it always preceded her
undertaking. She had such a 'wholesome fear of consequences,' that she
never played truant, as one whom I could mention did. Indeed,
antecedents and consequents were always associated in her mind. She
never risked any thing for herself or any one else.... Of course, she is
still _Miss_ Nancy, (I am 'Aunt Molly' to all my friends' children,)
though it is said that she might have been Mrs.----. Mr.----, a widower
of some six months' standing, thinking it time to commence his
probation--the engagement preparatory to being received into the full
matrimonial connection--made some advances toward Miss Nancy, she being
the nearest one verging on 'an uncertain age,' (you know widowers
always go the rounds of the old maids.) Though, in a worldly point of
view, he was an eligible match, she, from her fixed habits of caution,
half-hesitated as to whether it was best to receive his attentions--he
got in a hurry (you know widowers are always in a hurry) and married
some one else.... I don't think Miss Nancy would venture to love any man
before marriage--engagements are as liable to be broken as thin ice, and
it isn't best to throw away love. As for her giving it unasked!... How
peacefully her life flows along--or rather, it hardly flows at all,
about as much as a mill-pond--with such a small bit of heaven and earth
reflected in it. Oh! that placidity!--better have some great, heavy,
splashing sorrow thrown into it than that ever calm surface.... As for
me--it was a good thing that I was a girl--rash, never counting the
cost, without caution, it is well that I have to tread the quiet paths
of domestic life. Had I been a boy, thrown out into the rough, dangerous
world, I'd have rushed over the first precipice, breaking my moral, or
physical neck, or both. As it is, had I been like Miss Nancy, I would
have been spared many an agony, and--many an exquisite joy.

You may be sure that I have well learned all of caution's maxims; they
have, all my life, been dinged into my ears. Now I hate most maxims.
Though generally considered epitomes of wisdom, they should, almost all
of them, be received with a qualification. What is true in one case is
not true in another; what is good for one, is not good for anot