"All did not receive him so readily, but with some his money, like charity, covered a multitude of sins. But from the depths of my heart I despised him. I had not then learned to hate the sin with all my heart, and yet the sinner love. To me he was the incarnation of social meanness and vice. And just as I felt I acted. We young folks had met at a social gathering, and were engaged in a pastime in which we occasionally clasped hands together. Some of these plays I heartily disliked, especially when there was romping and promiscuous kissing. During the play Frank Miller's hand came in contact with mine and he pressed it. I can hardly describe my feelings. It seemed as if my very veins were on fire, and that every nerve was thrilling with repulsion and indignation. Had I seen him murder Lucy and then turn with blood dripping hands to grasp mine, I do not think that I should have felt more loathing than I did when his hand clasped mine. I felt that his very touch was pollution; I immediately left the play, tore off my glove, and threw it in the fire." "Oh, mother, how could you have done so? You are so good and gentle." Mrs. Lasette replied, "I was not always so. I do not hate his sin any less now than I did then but I think that I have learned a Christian charity which would induce me to pluck such as he out of the fire while I hated the garments spotted by his sins. I sat down trembling with emotion. I heard a murmur of disapprobation. There was a check to the gayety of the evening. Frank Miller, bold and bad as he was looked crestfallen and uneasy. Some who appeared to be more careful of the manners of society than its morals, said that I was very rude. Others said that I was too prudish, and would be an old maid, that I was looking for perfection in young men, and would not find it. That young men sow their wild oats, and that I was more nice than wise, and that I would frighten the gentlemen away from me. I told them if the young men were so easily frightened, that I did not wish to clasp hands for life with any such timid set, and that I was determined that I would have a moral husband or none; that I was not obliged to be married, but that I was obliged to be true to my conscience. That when I married I expected to lay the foundation of a new home, and that I would never trust my future happiness in the hands of a libertine, or lay its foundations over the reeling brain of a drunkard, and I determined that I would never marry a man for whose vices I must blush, and whose crimes I must condone; that while I might bend to grief I would not bow to shame; that if I brought him character and virtue, he should give me true manhood and honor in return." "And I think mother that you got it when you married father."