I confess that I
agreed to marry her; but it was to be at some distant day-a very
distant day as I intended--for, strange as it may seem, and as it
did seem to me, I had at last learned the lesson that I had better
let matrimony alone. I had married too many wives, widows,
milliners, and what not, already, and had suffered too severely for
so doing. I meant that my Vermont imprisonment, the worst of all,
should be the last.
So I only "courted" the widow, calling upon her almost every day,
and I was received and presented to her acquaintances as her
affianced husband. Her family and immediate friends were violently
opposed to the match, thereby showing their good sense. I was also
informed that they knew something of my previous history, and I was
warned that I had better not undertake to marry the widow. Bless
their innocent hearts! I had no idea of doing it. I was daily amazed
at my own common sense. My memory was active now; all my matrimonial
mishaps of the past, with all the consequences, were ever present to
my mind, and never more present than when was in the company of the
fascinating widow. As for her, the more her relatives opposed the
match, the more she was bent upon marrying me. Her family, she,
said, were afraid they were going to lose her property, but she
would never give them a cent of it, anyhow, and she would marry when
and whom she pleased.
Not "when," exactly; because, as she protested she would marry me, I
had something to say about it; I had been run away with by a
milliner in Vermont, and I had no idea of beings forcibly wedded by
a widow in Maine.
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