Page:Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations (Volume 2).djvu/24

12 with such excellent qualities, that she already found, in her society, consolation and happiness. She therefore denied herself, sometimes, the common necessaries of life, to give her daughter the advantages of a respectable education; being convinced that, if a maiden only answered the description which Solomon, the royal friend of women, has given of a good wife, such a costly pearl would be sought after, and selected as the brightest ornament an honest man could possess.

Virtue, united with beauty, were then quite as valuable in the eyes of young men, as powerful relations and a large fortune are at present. There were likewise a far greater number of competitors for a maiden’s hand, a wife being then considered as the most essential, and not, as (according to the present refined economical theory), the most unnecessary part of the household. The beauteous Mela, it is true, bloomed more like a rare costly plant in a green-house than a healthy shrub in the free air. She lived quietly and in retirement, under the maternal care and protection; visited neither the public