h a thought."

"True," said he, "as long as such obstacles exist to your success; so
many incurable objections: for instance, she is six years older than
you."

"That is an advantage. Her age is what it ought to be."

"But she has been a wife and mother already."

"That is likewise an advantage. She has wisdom, because she has
experience. Her sensibilities are stronger, because they have been
exercised and chastened. Her first marriage was unfortunate. The purer
is the felicity she will taste in a second! If her second choice be
propitious, the greater her tenderness and gratitude."

"But she is a foreigner; independent of control, and rich."

"All which are blessings to herself, and to him for whom her hand is
reserved; especially if, like me, he is indigent."

"But then she is unsightly as a _night-hag_, tawny as a Moor, the eye of
a gipsy, low in stature, contemptibly diminutive, scarcely bulk enough
to cast a shadow as she walks, less luxuriance than a charred log, fewer
elasticities than a sheet pebble."

"Hush! hush! blasphemer!"--(and I put my hand before his mouth)--"have I
not told you that in mind, person, and condition, she is the type after
which my enamoured fancy has modelled my wife?"

"Oh ho! Then the objection does not lie with you. It lies with her, it
seems. She can find nothing in you to esteem! And, pray, for what faults
do you think she would reject you?"

"I cannot tell. That she can ever balance for a moment, on such a
question, is incredible. _Me! me!_ That Achsa Fielding should think of
me!"

"Incredible, indeed! You, who are loathsome in your person, an idiot in
your understanding, a villain in your morals! deformed! withered! vain,
stupid, and malignant. That such a one should choose _you_ for an idol!"

"Pray, my friend," said I, anxiously, "jest not. What mean you by a hint
of this kind?"

"I will not jest, then, but will soberly inquire, what faults are they
which make this lady's choice of you so incredible? You are younger than
she, though no one, who merely observed your manners and heard you talk,
would take you to be under thirty. You are poor: are these impediments?"

"I should think not. I have heard her reason with admirable eloquence
against the vain distinctions of property and nation and rank. They were
once of moment in her eyes; but the sufferings, humiliations, and
reflections of years have cured her of the folly. Her nation has
suffered too much by the inhum