But this was rather an appointment
than a promise: and suppose it had been the latter; and that I had not
reserved to myself a liberty of revoking it; was it to preclude better
or maturer consideration?--If so, how unfit to be given!--how ungenerous
to be insisted upon!--And how unfitter still to be kept!--Is there a man
living who ought to be angry that a woman whom he hopes one day to
call his, shall refuse to keep a rash promise, when, on the maturest
deliberation, she is convinced that it was a rash one?

* See Numb. XXX. Where it is declared, whose vows shall be
binding, and whose not. The vows of a man, or of a widow,
are there pronounced to be indispensable; because they are
sole, and subject to no other domestic authority. But the
vows of a single woman, or of a wife, if the father of the
one, or the husband of the other, disallow of them as soon
as they know them, are to be of no force.

A matter highly necessary to be known; by all young ladies
especially, whose designing addressers too often endeavour
to engage them by vows; and then plead conscience and honour
to them to hold them down to the performance.

It cannot be amiss to recite the very words.

Ver. 3 If a woman vow a vow unto the Lord, and bind herself
by a bond, being in her father's house in her youth;

4. And her father hear her vow, and her bond wherewith she
hath bound her soul, and her father shall hold his peace at
her; then all her vows shall stand, and every bond wherewith
she hath bound her soul shall stand.

5. But if her father disallow her in the day that he
heareth; not any of her vows or of her bonds wherewith she
hath bound her soul shall stand: and the Lord shall forgive
her, because her father disallowed her.

The same in the case of a wife, as said above. See ver. 6,
7, 8, &c.--All is thus solemnly closed:

Ver. 16. These are the statutes which the Lord commanded
Moses between a man and his wife, between the father and his
daughter, being yet in her youth in her father's house.

I resolve then, upon the whole, to stand this one trial of Wednesday
next--or, perhaps, I should rather say, of Tuesday evening, if my father
hold his purpose of endeavouring, in person, to make me read, or hear
read, and then sign, the settlements.--That, that must be the greatest
trial of all.

If I am co