Kate! Kate!—I have a heart, a warm, confiding, loving heart! Strange that it has slept so long. But it is awake now. I have met one at whose feet I am willing to lay down the sceptre of my pride, for whose love I am ready to forego all my girlhood’s treasures. He loves me, and I shall be his wife. Ah! dear Kate, if you could know how I am tormented now, when my heart is so happy. Father calls me a fool, an unaccountable simpleton; mother sighs whenever her eyes rest on me, and she calls me a perverse child. My friends ridicule me; and Mr. Melwin—oh, Kate! I wish he had never seen me—I believe he takes a malicious pleasure in upbraiding me whenever he can find opportunity. I tell him honestly that I could not be his, because I could not love him. Then he asks why I coqueted with him? Coqueted! Now is not that provoking. I endured his attentions, because he was every way an excellent man, and I thought that if I could learn to love him, I should be most happy as his wife. How did I know that I could never love him until I tested my feeling by being much in his society? It does seem that the world is resolved to take from woman her only prerogative—that of _choosing_ whom she will serve. Kate, love! am I not right? Since woman, on her wedding-day, loses her identity, and is thenceforth merged—name, honor, fame, fortune, every thing in him to whom she plights herself—does it not become her to be cautious to whom she thus resigns herself. Since our only freedom is this privilege of choosing a husband, should we not be suffered to exercise it? And yet if we reject one, two, or three suitors, we are heartless, and coquettes. If there were more such coquettes in the world, there would be infinitely less misery. I am of Aunt Alice’s opinion, that most girls marry before they know any thing of love. You will see a vain child, just from boarding-school, tricked out in all the pride of fashion, and introduced to the _world_ at some splendid ball or party. Of course, she is flattered, and admired, and complimented—she has made a splendid _début_. Presently some gentleman pays her marked attentions. She is flattered by his preference. She has imbibed the prevalent opinion that the end of all woman’s duties and aspirations is an eligible marriage. Her admirer is an unexceptionable man. She will accept him; and then, oh, how she will queen it as a bride, at the head of a splendid establishment. Her friends encourage her, applaud her choice, and she is married. Afterward, her husband discovers with astonishment, that in place of a meek, loving woman, he has got a selfish, arrogant, proud, and petulant child to manage as he best may. But then she never was a coquette! But to return. When I asked Mr. Melwin if he could desire me to give him my hand without love, he invariably replies, if you could not love me, why did you not tell me so, before I had centered in you all my hopes, and braided you in every