Port Tobacco Times, And Charles County Advertiser

WOMAN AND MARRIAGE.—I have speculated a great deal upon matrimony! I have seen a young and beautiful woman, the pride of gay circles, married, as the world says, well. Some have moved into costly houses, and their friends have come and looked at their furniture and their splendid arrangement for happiness, and they have gone away and committed them to their sunny hopes cheerfully and without fear. It is natural to be sanguine for them; as the young sometimes are carried away by similar feelings, I love to get, unobserved, into a corner, and watch the bride in her white attire, and, with her smiling face and soft eyes meeting me in their pride of life, weave a waking dream of future happiness, and persuade myself that it will be true. I think how they will sit upon the luxuriant sofa as the twilight falls, and build gay hopes and murmur in low tones the now not unforbidden tenderness; and how thrillingly the allowed kiss and beautiful endearments of wedded life will make even their parting joyous, and how gladly come back from the crowded and empty mirth of the gay to each other's company. I picture to myself that young creature, who blushes, even now, at his hesitating caress, listening eagerly for his footsteps as the night steals on, and wishing that he would come, and, when he enters at last, and, with an affection as undying as his pulse, folds her to his bosom, I can feel the tide that goes flowing through the heart, and gaze with him on the graceful form as she moves about for the offices of affection, soothing all his unquiet cares and making him forget even himself in her young and unshadowed beauty. I go forward for years, and see her luxuriant hair put soberly away from her brow, and her girlish graces resigned into dignity, and loveliness chastened with the gentle meekness of maternal affection. Her husband looks on her with a proud eye, and shows her the same fervent love and delicate attentions which first won her; and her fair children are grown about them, and they go on full of honor and untroubled years, and are remembered when they die.—Washington Irving.