Women are obliged to keep a constant guard over themselves. They know their own weakness, and self-protection arms them to the task. Many a high-souled woman knows this. When you do find a well-disciplined character in the female form, what a noble one it is! The labor of the undertaking, the education of self-control, has made her great. She is a whole host. Look at her influence in society; see the majesty of her deportment, the easy assurance of her countenance. How common men quail before her! What respect and attention she exacts from the titled profligate, and the talented vicious! She is all that is exalted on earth. There is no beauty to compare with such beauty; no wealth with such charms. She is the nicest workmanship of God; and in her dwells a soul that scatters blessings around her. 'The heart of her husband delighteth in her, and he has no need of spoil.' Reader, if you are a father, and have seen the son of your hopes, the inheritor of your name, the bearer of your form and features, gradually falling a victim to low vices; if you are a mother, and can trace, in those features now bloated with excess, and in that eye now dimmed with sensuality, the semblance to the babe that drew its earliest food from your pure bosom, and remember that eye upturned to your face as the innocent lay cradled in your arms; if you are a sister, and mourn the ruin of your bed-fellow; or a brother, and seen your playmate in prison, you may form some notion of what the emotions of a fond heart are, when it beholds its stay gone, its prospects blighted, and its love thrown away upon an unworthy object. No! not altogether unworthy, but with just enough of good to keep alive the love, while it mocks all efforts to draw consolation, to answer the chord in her own bosom. Love wishes its object to be perfect. None can or must compare with its choice. How fondly does woman cheat herself, if she can, into the belief that her choice is fortunate beyond human fortune! I weep--even I, who have not wept for years for my own misfortunes--I weep, as I recall the memory of the tears she shed over my irrevocable ruin. She did know my character, at last, and she predicted, even in spite of her love, all that has happened. Shall I record that these tears were not a source of pain to me then? They satisfied my vanity. I always reserved reformation to myself, and thought she was mistaken; and these scalding tears, as they coursed down her cheeks, told me that I was beloved. Not even the misery of the object of my affection could prevent a triumph that I had over her--_her_, the sought-for by many--that I was preferred among a multitude. Is this nature? Was I hard-hearted? Would not any one feel the same? Let the reader examine his own heart, and answer. CHAPTER XIII.