“Rosalie, you don’t know what you brave! Fancy yourself and Mark now married, and housekeeping (forsooth!) in some wretched log cabin or some lath-and-plaster shell of a shanty, in some new Western village. Fancy yourselves both down with that curse of new settlements, the ague, and each unable to help the other, and no one to give you a cup of tea, and perhaps with no tea in the house.” “That is a plain statement of a very dismal contingency, dear mamma. Yet I have no doubt that we should shiver and shake safely through it, as others have done. Yet it is not fair or wise to contemplate the worst possibility only. The Western pioneers are not always laid up _with_ the ague and _without_ tea!” said Rosalie, with a sparkle of fun in her eyes. But in a moment after, the young girl’s face grew serious, and she said, in a tremulous voice, “And besides, dear mamma, the very bugbears that you have evoked to frighten me from my journey only draw me on to go. Oh, do you think, mamma, that I could bear to stay here in safety, ease, and luxury, and know that he was far away, exposed to all the dangers, hardships, and privations of a pioneer life?” “Nonsense! Danger is the natural element of man! to seek it is the nature of the creature!” “Yes, mamma; but illness, fever, burning thirst, solitude, and helplessness, is _not_. And, if I thought that Mark were suffering all these things in some wretched Western cabin, and I not near to bathe his head and give him a cup of cold water, and to nurse and comfort and soothe him, but separated from him by thousands of miles of mountains and plains, I tell you, mamma, it would nearly break my heart! It is no use! I _must_ go with him, to meet whatever of good or ill Fate has in store. It can have nothing else so evil as a separation! Oh! I feel as if the worst calamity that could possibly befall me, would be a separation from him.” “Foolish girl! You love that broad-shouldered, robust man, as tenderly as a mother loves her babe!” “I love him with a tenderness and sympathy that makes me tremblingly alive to his least sorrow or lightest pain; and yet mark you, mamma, with an esteem, with a depth of respect, with an honour that makes me aspire to his approbation as my highest good under Heaven!” “O Rosalie, I will not farther oppose you! Yet, if you only had strength to endure the hardships of a Western life, I should feel less anxiety.” “Do not fear. I shall be able to endure, because ‘my good will is to it;’ and energetic, because I shall have a good motive; and healthy, because I shall be happy—because my heart will be right and at rest; for I say it again, because it is a great deep truth—‘_Out of the heart are the issues of life!_’ Yes, out of the heart are the issues of will, purpose, hope, health, strength, enterprise, achievement, SUCCESS! Out of the heart are the issues of all the good that can come back to us in time or eternity! on earth or in Heaven!”