Page:The Wanderer (1814 Volume 3).pdf/372

 I will do, and what I will give, to make my wife merry and comfortable upon my going out of the world,—I protest I shudder with horrour! I think there is nothing upon earth so mercenary, as a young nymph upon the point of becoming a bride!"

"Except,—" Juliet here could not resist saying, "except the man,—young or old,—who is her bridegroom!"

"O, that's another thing! quite another thing! A man must needs take care of his house, and his table, and all that: but the horridest thing I know, is the condition tied to a man's obtaining the hand of a young woman; he can never solicit it, but by giving her a prospect of his death-bed! And she never consents to live with him, till she knows what she may gain by his dying! 'Tis the most shocking style of making love that can be imagined. I don't like it, I swear! What, now, would you advise me to do?"

"I?"