fter a lugubrious
fashion, as became a man with a broken heart, who was laden with many
sorrows, and had just been separated from his lady love for ever and
ever. But still, when there came anything good, in the way of a run,
and when our Captain could get near to hounds, he enjoyed the fun,
and forgot his troubles for a while. Is a man to know no joy because
he has an ache at his heart?

In this matter of disappointed and, as it were, disjointed affection,
men are very different from women, and for the most part, much more
happily circumstanced. Such sorrow a woman feeds;--but a man starves
it. Many will say that a woman feeds it, because she cannot but feed
it; and that a man starves it, because his heart is of the starving
kind. But, in truth, the difference comes not so much from the inner
heart, as from the outer life. It is easier to feed a sorrow upon
needle-and-thread and novels, than it is upon lawyers' papers, or
even the out-a-door occupations of a soldier home upon leave who has
no work to do. Walter Marrable told himself again and again that he
was very unhappy about his cousin, but he certainly did not suffer in
that matter as Mary suffered. He had that other sorrow, arising from
his father's cruel usage of him, to divide his thoughts, and probably
thought quite as much of the manner in which he had been robbed, as
he did of the loss of his love.

But poor Mary was, in truth, very wretched. When a girl asks herself
that question,--what shall she do with her life? it is so natural
that she should answer it by saying that she will get married, and
give her life to somebody else. It is a woman's one career--let
women rebel against the edict as they may; and though there may
be word-rebellion here and there, women learn the truth early in
their lives. And women know it later in life when they think of
their girls; and men know it, too, when they have to deal with their
daughters. Girls, too, now acknowledge aloud that they have learned
the lesson; and Saturday Reviewers and others blame them for their
lack of modesty in doing so,--most unreasonably, most uselessly, and,
as far as the influence of such censors may go, most perniciously.
Nature prompts the desire, the world acknowledges its ubiquity,
circumstances show that it is reasonable, the whole theory of
creation requires it; but it is required that the person most
concerned should falsely repudiate it, in order that a mock modesty
may be maintained, i