There is a great deal of human nature in the account which Artemus Ward gives of the many affecting ties which made him hanker after Betsy Jane. "Her father's farm jined our'n; their cows and our'n squencht their thurst at the same spring; our old mares both had stars in their forrerds; the measles broke out in both famerlies at nearly the same period; our parients (Betsy's and mine) slept reglarly every Sunday in the same meetin-house, and the nabers used to obsarve, 'How thick the Wards and Peasleys air!' It was a surblime site, in the spring of the year, to see our sevral mothers (Betsy's and mine) with their gowns pin'd up so thay couldn't sile 'em affecshunitly bilin sope together and aboozin the nabers." In this matter more than in most others "we do not will according to our reason, we reason according to our will." True desire, the monition of nature, is much to be attended to. But always we are to discriminate carefully between _true_ desire and false. The medical men tell us we should eat what we _truly_ have an appetite for; but what we only _falsely_ have an appetite for we should resolutely avoid. Ought not choice in matrimony to be guided by the same principle? Above all things young ladies should ask God, the best maker of marriages, to direct their choice aright. CHAPTER VI. ON MAKING THE BEST OF A BAD MATRIMONIAL BARGAIN. "How poor are they who have not patience! What wound did ever heal, but by degrees?"--_Shakespeare._ "E'en now, in passing through the garden walks, Upon the ground I saw a fallen nest, Ruined and full of ruin; and over it, Behold, the uncomplaining birds, already Busy in building a new habitation."--_Longfellow._ But "the best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft a-gley." We are none of us infallible, "not even the youngest." When the greatest care has been taken in choosing, people get bad matrimonial bargains. From the nature of the case this must often happen. If not one man in a thousand is a judge of the points of a horse, not one in a million understands human nature. And even if a young man or woman did understand human nature, there are before marriage, as a rule, opportunities of gaining only the slightest knowledge of the character of one who is to be the weal or woe of a new home. It is related in ancient history, or fable, that when Rhodope, a fashionable Egyptian beauty, was engaged bathing, an eagle stole away one of her shoes, and let it fall near Psammetichus the king. Struck with the pretty shoe, he fell in love with the foot, and finally married the owner of both. Very little more acquaintance with each other have the majority of the Innocents who go abroad into the unknown country of Matrimony to seek their fortunes or misfortunes.