Mosses from an Old Manse, and other stories

little niceties of personal appearance, habits, disposition, and other trifles which concern nobody but the lady herself. An unhappy gentleman, resolving to wed nothi

ate. The true rule is to ascertain that the match is fundamentally a good one, and then to take it for granted that all minor objections, should there be such, will vanish, if you let them alone. O

and such varied excellence did I require in the woman whom I could love, that there was an awful risk of my getting no wife at all, or of being driven to perpetrate matrimony with my own image in the looking-glass. Besides the fundamental principle already hinted at, I demanded the fresh bloom of youth, pearly teeth, glossy ringlets, and the whole list of lovely items, with the utmost delicacy of habits and sentiments, a silken texture of mind, and, above all, a virgin heart. In a word, if a young angel just from paradise, yet dressed in earthly fashion, had come and offered me her hand, it is by no means certain that I should have taken it. There was every chance of my becom

d charmingly in a green silk calash and riding habit of pelisse cloth; and whenever her red lips parted with a smile, each tooth appeared like an inestimable pearl. Such was my passionate warmth that - we had rattled out of the village, gentle reader, and were lonely as Adam and Eve in paradise - I plead guilty to no

llfrog tenderly, "you w

ur fair hand could not manage a curl more delicately than mine. I propose myself the

ted she, "you must no

love to have something in my fingers; so that, being debarred from my wife's curls, I looked about me for any other plaything. On the front seat of the coach there was one of those small baskets in which travelling ladies who are too delicate to appear at a public table generally carry a supply of gingerbr

; for the black neck of a bottl

my wife, coolly taking the basket from m

d carelessly driven over a heap of gravel and fairly capsized the coach, with the wheels in the air and our heels where our heads should have been. What became of my wits I cannot imagine; they have always had a perverse trick of deserting me just when they were most needed; but so it chanced, that in the confusion

oarse voice. "You have ruined me, you blackg

lassed in the gentler sex. There being no teeth to modulate the voice, it had a mumbled fierceness, not passionate, but stern, which absolutely made me quiver like calf's-foot jelly. Who could the phantom be? The most awful circumstance of the affair is yet to be told: for this ogre, or whatever it was, had a riding habit like Mrs. Bullfrog's, and also a green silk calash dangling down her back by the strings. In my terro

oblin to me; then, with a terrific screech at three countrymen at a distance, "He

ll streaming from his nose, tugged and toiled most manfully, dreading, doubtless, that the next blow might break his head. And yet, bemauled as the poor fellow had been, he seemed to glance at me with an eye of pity, as if my

ce, gentlemen. My dear Mr. Bullfrog, how you perspire! Do let me wipe your face. Don't take this litt

e driver, rubbing his ear and pulling his nose, to ascertain

and was, in all respects, the lovely woman who had been sitting by my side at the instant of our overturn. How she had happened to disappear, and who had supplied her place, and whence she did now return, were problems too knotty for me to solve. There stood my wife. That was the one thing certain among a heap o

angel of a wife; but what if a Gorgon should return, amid the transports of our connubial bliss, and take the angel's place. I recollected the tale of a fairy, who half the time was a beautiful woman and half the time a hideous monst

cle of several columns, in which I soon grew wonderfully interested. It was the report of a trial for breach of promise of marriage, giving the testimony in full, with fervid extracts from both the gentleman's and lady's amatory correspondence. The deserted damsel had personally appeared in court, and had borne energeti

small, delicate, and thin-visaged man, I feel assured that I looked very terrific, -

plied my wife, sweetly, "I tho

exclaimed I, sinki

nding me asunder - I, the most exquisitely fastidious of men, and whose wife was to have been the most

e coachman's bruised ear and bloody nose; I thought of the tender love secrets which she had

frog," sa

ds within her own, removed them from my fa

yourself, to the best of your ability, as good a husband as I will be a wife. You have discovered, perhaps, some little imperfections in your bride. Well

e imperfections?" int

disclose her frailties earlier than the wedding day? Few husbands, I assure you, make the discovery in such good season,

r breach of prom

uld have dreamed it! Is it an objection that I have triumphantly defended myself against slander and vindicated my purity in a court of jus

isely how much contradiction the proper spirit of a woman would endure, - "but, my love, wou

ly; "but, in that case, where would have been the five t

as if my life hung upon her words, "is there

she. "The jury gave me every cent the rascal h

matrimonial bliss is secure, and all thy little defects and frailties are forgiven. Nay, since the result has been so