MY DEAR MARGARET, Did you ever read these lines?--

'Tis said that marriages are made above--
It may be so, some few, perhaps, for love.
But from the smell of sulphur I should say
They must be making MATCHES here all day.

(Orpheus returning from the lower world in a farce called "The
Olympic Devils," which used to be played when I was young.)

Miss Nightingale talks to me of "the feelings usually called
love," but then she is a heroine, perhaps a goddess.

This love-making is a very serious business, though society makes
fun of it, perhaps to test the truth and earnestness of the
lovers.

Dear, I am an old man, what the poet calls "on the threshold of
old age" (Homer), and I am not very romantic or sentimental about
such things, but I would do anything I could to save any one who
cares for me from making a mistake.

I think that you are quite right in not running the risk without a
modest abode in the country.

The real doubt about the affair is the family; will you consider
this and talk it over with your mother? The other day you were at
a masqued ball, as you told me--a few months hence you will have,
or rather may be having, the care of five children, with all the
ailments and miseries and disagreeables of children (unlike the