“Ah! Rolfe,” said Earth, “now you go too far. In the first place, you don't know whether she is the same girl, and you had better write to Petersburg, and learn that; and if she is, pity her, and talk of her as much as you please; but don't talk of giving up; no body ever made any thing by that. If you give up, you have got to live afterward, and one had better go to work, and be respected, than to poke about, and do nothing. But your country needs your services:—man! go, mingle in her councils, and make Earthquake proud of his adopted brother. Though times are rather squally, I hardly think there will be a war, and if there was, you are not overly clever with a gun; and you don't think right about killing Ingens no how; but, perhaps in a legislature or a court-house, you might make the wool fly.” “I dare say your advice is good, Earth, and we will talk of this matter another time; but it is hard to surrender the cherished hope of years. Earth, were you ever in love?” “Ah! Rolfe, there you are too hard for me, I hardly know what to say about that.” “Surely,” said Rolfe, “you must know whether you were ever in love or not.” “No, I don't,” said Earth;—“I have sometimes felt queer.” “How? what do you mean by queer?” “Why, don't you know what I mean by queer?” “No,” said Rolfe; “how should I know.” “Well, I mean that sometimes, when I have seen some of our Kentuck' gals, I've felt right funny;—felt as if somebody was drawing a briar over me. Now, if you call that love, I have been in love.” “Well, I think you have,” said Rolfe, “and that you have felt one of its strongest symptoms. Do you know any body that you would marry?” “No, not a living soul; nor, for the matter of that, a dead one either. I marry! what for? To be always toating a wife through the woods, or across the swamps, to keep some damn'd red skin from taking her hair off? Wouldn't she see rough times? Fool who?—She'd be all sorts of a gal who catches me.” Rolfe could not resist laughing, and observed:—“You have queer ideas of wedlock, Earth.” “Oh! I don't know,” said Earth, “a wife is a queer thing; and getting one is like taking a varment out of a hollow;—you don't know until you have got it into your hand, what sort of a thing it is.” “That may be the case sometimes, Earth; but how delightful it must be to have for a companion, a lovely woman, whose every thought is virtuous and innocent; and then to have that woman so devoted to you, that her only pleasure consists in doing those things which make you happy.” “That may be very fine, Rolfe; but I know that there ain't sich a gal in these parts, and I don't believe sich a thing ever happens.” “Yes, Earth, it happens, when persons of congenial minds and dispositions are united, before they reach that scheming period of life in which interest sways all their actions.”