"You need no explanation to teach you the progress of this in my own mind, for you know me well enough to read it without book, and you may easily imagine how I feel at such a crisis. O, it is solemn, it is awful, thus to bind one's self for life! and yet I am conscious my whole heart is with the act, and my happiness intimately dependent upon it. This feeling of distrust and fearfulness will soon pass away. I have not been used to its interference in any case where I have known it was my _duty_ to act; it is only when we seem to have the direction of events in our own hands, that the feeling of doubt as to what _is_ duty weakens our confidence in our success. You will say, feeling must be the guide; and so it must so far as this, that we may be sure that that path is not the right one to which it does _not_ impel; but there is danger of its tempting to the wrong one notwithstanding, and it cannot be safe unhesitatingly to follow its impulses. "Mr. Ware goes to New York on Thursday, for four weeks, to preach; he will, I suppose, return by the way of Northampton, and I hope you will not object to a visit from him on the way. But I must put an end to this. I am in truth unable to write more. "Yours most truly, "M. L. P." The relation thus viewed by a Christian woman has often one aspect, as in the present instance, which is thought more delicate and unapproachable than any other. Mary was to take the place, not only of a wife, but of a "step-mother,"--a name that should be redeemed from the inconsiderate and unjust odium to which it is commonly subjected. Why should that odium attach to this, more than to all _unfaithful_ use of the conjugal relation? Does not this, the more difficult office, exhibit proportionably as many noble wives and true mothers as the other? According to the difficulty and the delicacy, is the greatness of the trust and the merit of fidelity. Let honor be rendered where honor is due; and let no vulgar prejudice or unkind prediction hide a beauty and excellence of woman that are less rare than may be supposed.