"Well," said I, "I don't think I shall ever marry. Of course if I could find a woman like my mother, it would be another thing. But times are altered--the women of this day are all for flash and ambition, and money. There are no more such as you used to find in the old days." "Oh, nonsense, Harry; don't come to me with that sort of talk. Bad sort for a young man--very. What I want to see in a young fellow is a resolution to have a good wife and a home of his own as quick as he can find it. The Roman Catholics weren't so far out of the way when they said marriage was a sacrament. It is the greatest sacrament of life, and that old church does yeoman service to humanity in the stand she takes for Christian marriage. I should call that the most prosperous state when all the young men and women were well mated and helping one another according to God's ordinances. You may be sure, Harry, that you can never be a whole man without a wife." "Well," I said; "there's time enough for that by and by; if I'm predestinated I suppose it'll come along when I have my fortune made." "Don't wait to be rich, Harry. Find a faithful, heroic friend that will strike hands with you, poor, and begin to build up your nest together,--that's the way your father and mother did, and who enjoyed more? That's the way your Aunt Polly and I did, and a good time we have had of it. There has always been the handful of meal in the barrel and the little oil in the cruse, and if the way we have always lived is poverty, all I have to say is, poverty is a pretty nice thing." "But," said I, bitterly, "you talk of golden ages. There are no such women now as you found, the women now are mere effeminate dolls of fashion--all they want is ease and show, and luxury, and they care nothing who gives it--one man is as good as another if he is only rich." "Tut, tut, boy! Don't you read your Bible? Away back in Solomon's time, it's written, 'Who can find a virtuous woman? Her price is above rubies.' Are rubies found without looking for them, and do diamonds lie about the street? Now, just attend to my words--brave men make noble women, and noble women make brave men. Be a true man first, and some day a true woman will be given you. Yes, a woman whose opinion of you will hold you up if all the world were against you, and whose 'Well done!' will be a better thing to come home to, than the senseless shouting of the world who scream for this thing to-day and that to-morrow." By this time the horse had turned up the lane, and my mother stood smiling in the door. I marked the soft white hair that shone like a moonlight glory round her head, and prayed inwardly that the heavens would spare her yet a little longer. CHAPTER X COUSIN CAROLINE. "You must go and see your cousin Caroline," said my mother, the first evening after I got home; "you've no idea how pretty she's grown." "She's what I call a pattern girl," said my uncle Jacob, "a girl that can make the most of life."