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The balance of comfort; or The old maid and married woman
The balance of comfort or The old maid and married woman Author:Ross Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Misses ! the tale that I relate This lesson seems to carry— Choose not alone a proper mate, But proper time to marry. Cowfer. Elizabeth ... more »had, early in the days of her courtship, informed Mr. Arlingham of the former engagement subsisting between her sister Isabella and Mr. Philip- son, the curate of the parish of Fairfield, about seven miles from their present residence. This engagement had been formed under happier auspices than at present smiled upon the youthful lovers, for Mr. 1'hilipson had at that time believed himself heir to a comfortable independence—a belief which the death of his father entirely destroyed, for he died insolvent. Isabella, Isabella, -with the romantic generosity of youth and inexperience, would willingly have overlooked this sad event, and have convinced her lover that her affection was independent of all worldly considerations; and Philipson was fully inclined to he equally absurd; for he fancied like a raw college boy new to love and the world, that a wife so beautiful and so affectionate to share and alleviate his cares, must recompense him for all his sufferings. Love and a cottage, brown bread and potatoes, with the clear waters of the brook, appeared to them sufficient, and they believed they should in their own persons revive and realize the blissful but visionary scenes of the ancient Arcadia. Fortunately for them both, Mrs. Vernon saw with older and more experienced eyes, and positively prohibited all future intercourse, till more fortunate prospects opened on the young divine. A curacy of eighty pounds a-year appeared to her sober and reason- ' ' ableable mind in a very different view from that which struck on the romantic imagination of Isabella. She could pierce through the brilliant veil with which. love dazzled ...« less