white sheet and on the stool of
repentance, offering myself up as a warning to imprudent and hot-headed
youth.

But, truth to say, that married life, regarding which my dear relatives
prophesied so gloomily, has disappointed all those prudent and
respectable people. It has had its trials; but I can remember them
without bitterness--its passionate griefs, of which time, by God's kind
ordinance, has been the benign consoler--its days of poverty, which
we bore, who endured it, to the wonder of our sympathising relatives
looking on--its precious rewards and blessings, so great that I scarce
dare to whisper them to this page; to speak of them, save with awful
respect and to One Ear, to which are offered up the prayers and thanks
of all men. To marry without a competence is wrong and dangerous,
no doubt, and a crime against our social codes; but do not scores of
thousands of our fellow-beings commit the crime every year with no
other trust but in, Heaven, health, and their labour? Are young people
entering into the married life not to take hope into account, nor dare
to begin their housekeeping until the cottage is completely furnished,
the cellar and larder stocked, the cupboard full of plate, and the
strong-box of money? The increase and multiplication of the world would
stop, were the laws which regulate the genteel part of it to be made
universal. Our gentlefolks tremble at the brink in their silk stockings
and pumps, and wait for whole years, until they find a bridge or a gilt
barge to carry them across; our poor do not fear to wet their bare feet,
plant them in the brook, and trust to fate and strength to bear them
over. Who would like to consign his daughter to poverty? Who would
counsel his son to undergo the countless risks of poor married life, to
remove the beloved girl from comfort and competence, and subject her
to debt, misery, privation, friendlessness, sickness, and the hundred
gloomy consequences of the res angusta domi? I look at my own wife and
ask her pardon for having imposed a task so fraught with pain and danger
upon one so gentle. I think of the trials she endured, and am thankful
for them and for that unfailing love and constancy with which God
blessed her and strengthened her to bear them all. On this question of
marriage, I am not a fair judge: my own was so imprudent--and has been
so happy, that I must not dare to give young people counsel. I have
endured poverty, but scarcely ever found it otherwi