ny
young girl so cruel a wrong as to tempt her to throw away her youth and
beauty on an old man like me; and I am sure I have sense enough to
prevent me from doing myself so great an injustice as to buy a young
wife, who, in the very natur' of things, would be looking for'ard to my
death as the beginning of her life; for I've heard as how the very life
of a woman is love, and if the girl-wife cannot love her old
husband--Oh, Hannah, let us drop the veil--the pictur' is too sickening
to look at. Such marriages are crimes. Ah, Hannah, in the way of
sweethearting, age may love youth, but youth can't love age. And another
thing I am sartin' sure of--as a young girl is a much more delicate
cre'tur' than a young man, it must be a great deal harder for her to
marry an old man than it would be for him to marry an old woman, though
either would be horrible."

"You seem to have found this out somehow, Reuben."

"Well, yes, my dear; it was along of a rich old fellow, hereaway, as
fell in love with my little Kitty's rosy cheeks and black eyes, and
wanted to make her Mrs. Barnabas Winterberry. And I saw how that girl
was at the same time tempted by his money and frightened by his age; and
how in her bewitched state, half-drawn and half-scared, she fluttered
about him, for all the world like a humming-bird going right into the
jaws of a rattlesnake. Well, I questioned little Kitty, and she answered
me in this horrid way--'Why, brother, he must know I can't love him; for
how can I? But still he teases me to marry him, and I can do that; and
why shouldn't I, if he wants me to?' Then in a whisper--'You know,
brother, it wouldn't be for long; because he is ever so old, and he
would soon die; and then I should be a rich young widow, and have my
pick and choose out of the best young men in the country side.' Such,
Hannah, was the evil state of feeling to which that old man's courtship
had brought my simple little sister! And I believe in my soul it is the
natural state of feeling into which every young girl falls who marries
an old man."

"That is terrible, Reuben."

"Sartinly it is."

"What did you say to your sister?"

"Why, I didn't spare the feelings of little Kitty, nor her doting
suitor's nyther, and that I can tell you! I talked to little Kitty like
a father and mother, both; I told her well what a young traitress she
was a-planning to be; and how she was fooling herself worse than she was
deceiving her old beau, who had got