Don’t you remember Mr. Tolson, of Derbyshire? he was determined never to marry a widow. If he did, it should be one who had a vast fortune, and who never had a child. And he had still a more particular exception; and that was to a woman who had red hair. He held his exceptions till he was forty; and then being looked upon as a determined batchelor, no family thought it worth their while to make proposals to him; no woman to throw out a net for him (to express myself in the stile of the gay Mr. Greville); and he at last fell in with, and married, the laughing Mrs Turner: a widow, who had little or no fortune, had one child, a daughter, living, and that child an absolute ideot; and, to complete the perverseness of his fate, her hair not only red, but the most disagreeable of reds. The honest man was grown splenetic: disregarded by every body, he was become disregardful of himself: he hoped for a cure of his gloominess, from her cheerful vein; and seemed to think himself under obligation to one who had taken notice of him, when nobody else would. Batchelors’ wives! Maids’ children! These old saws always mean something.

Mr. Fowler saw me at my cousin Reeves’s the first time. I cannot say he is disagreeable in his person: but he seems to want the mind I would have a man blessed with, to whom J am to vow love and honour. I purpose, whenever I marry, to make a very good and even a dutiful wife [must I not vow obe-dience? and shall I break my marriage-vow?]: I would not, therefore, on any consideration, marry a man, whose want of knowledge might make me stagger in the performance of my duty to him; and who would perhaps command from caprice, or want cf understanding, what I should think unreasonable to be complied with. There is a pleasure and a credit in yielding up even one’s judgment in things indifferent, to a man who is older and wiser than one’s self: but we are apt to doubt in one of a contrary character, what in the other we should have no doubt about: and doubt, you know, of a per-son’s merit, is the first step to disrespect: and what, but disobedience, which lets in every evil, is the next?

I saw instantly that Mr. Fowler beheld me with a distinguished regard. We women, you know [let me for once be aforehand with my uncle] are very quick in making discoveries of this nature. But every — body at table saw it. He came again next day. and besought Mr — Reeves to give him his inte-rest with me. without asking any questions about my fortune: though he was even generously particular as to his own. He might, since he has an unexcep-tionable one. Who is it in these cases that forgets to set foremost the advantages by which he is distinguished? While fortune is the last thing talked of by him who has little or none: and then Love, love, love % is all his crv.