es like
young and thoughtless persons: with two or three other positions of a no
less sound and incontrovertible character. She then remarked, in a
devout spirit, that she thanked Heaven she had always found in her
daughter May a dutiful and obedient child: for which she took no credit
to herself, though she had every reason to believe it was entirely owing
to herself. With regard to Mr. Tackleton, she said, That he was in a
moral point of view an undeniable individual, and That he was in an
eligible point of view a son-in-law to be desired, no one in their
senses could doubt. (She was very emphatic here.) With regard to the
family into which he was so soon about, after some solicitation, to be
admitted, she believed Mr. Tackleton knew that, although reduced in
purse, it had some pretensions to gentility; and that if certain
circumstances, not wholly unconnected, she would go so far as to say,
with the Indigo Trade, but to which she would not more particularly
refer, had happened differently, it might perhaps have been in
possession of wealth. She then remarked that she would not allude to the
past, and would not mention that her daughter had for some time rejected
the suit of Mr. Tackleton; and that she would not say a great many other
things which she did say at great length. Finally, she delivered it as
the general result of her observation and experience, that those
marriages in which there was least of what was romantically and sillily
called love, were always the happiest; and that she anticipated the
greatest possible amount of bliss--not rapturous bliss; but the solid,
steady-going article--from the approaching nuptials. She concluded by
informing the company that to-morrow was the day she had lived for
expressly; and that, when it was over, she would desire nothing better
than to be packed up and disposed of in any genteel place of burial.

As these remarks were quite unanswerable--which is the happy property of
all remarks that are sufficiently wide of the purpose--they changed the
current of the conversation, and diverted the general attention to the
Veal and Ham Pie, the cold mutton, the potatoes, and the tart. In order
that the bottled beer might not be slighted, John Peerybingle proposed
To-morrow: the Wedding-day; and called upon them to drink a bumper to
it, before he proceeded on his journey.

For you ought to know that he only rested there, and gave the old horse
a bait. He had to go some four or five