This young lady had a most “business-like determination to marry”; and as she generally had more than one string to her bow, as the saying is, it is no wonder that she sometimes needed the help of an older and wiser woman than herself, to get her out of the difficulties in which she found herself. Much of Mary’s own character comes out in the advice she gives her friend. She speaks in one place of her power of valuing people for what they are, without demanding or expecting perfection. It is a “knack I know I have, of looking into people’s real character, and never expecting them to act out of it—never expecting another to do as I would in the same case.” How much practical wisdom there is in this, and what misunderstandings and heart-burnings would be saved if it were more common not to expect people to act out of their own characters! There is a funny little bit in another letter to the effect that women should not be constantly admonishing men as to the right line of thought and conduct. “I make it a point of conscience never to interfere or cross my brother in the humour he happens to be in. It always appears to me a vexatious kind of tyranny, that women have no business to exercise over men, which merely because, _they having a better judgment_, they have power to do. Let _men_ alone, and at last we find they come round to the right way which _we_, by a kind of intuition, perceive at once. But better, far better, that we should let them often do wrong than that they should have the torment of a monitor always at their elbows.”