"Your poor mother came to me in great trouble yesterday bringing with her the flippant, the almost indecent letter, which you had thought proper to send her. Little did I think, Hephzibah Wallis, when I placed in your hands the beautiful copy of the 'Dairyman's Daughter,' which I had intended should be your guide through life, and which you afterwards so hypocritically informed me you frequently perused, that I was patronizing a girl who was about to rush headlong to her own destruction. If I remember rightly, the dairyman's daughter was a sickly person like yourself, but _she_ would never have degraded herself by even hinting at an immoral marriage with a foreigner; nor would she have ever dared to propose such an abomination to her own mother as a marriage which should be kept secret from her mistress and from the wife of her parochial clergyman. I shall not, then, shrink, Hephzibah Wallis, from the duty of warning you. Except among the upper classes marriages with foreigners always end in misery; and it is extremely doubtful whether such unions in the eyes of heaven are marriages at all. I have repeatedly pointed out to my girls at the Sunday school, and to you among the number, that no young woman in domestic service should think of entering upon the marriage state till she is past all work. I was pained to see by your letter that you have evidently hardened your heart, and I am aware that the deaf adder will not listen to the voice of the charmer, charm he (or she) never so wisely. I know that you are exposed to the dangerous fascinations of a designing foreign manservant, who, to use your own expression, only addresses you in 'dictionary words;' no doubt such language is apt to turn the head of any young woman. But let me tell you, Hephzibah Wallis, that you will have a far greater chance of happiness in this world, and the next, as the wife of an English deaf mute of high principle, than you would have if married (even in the unlikely contingency of such a marriage turning out to be legal) to any foreigner, however eloquent, who is of course, as all such people are, wholly irreligious.