it possible that all I have said cannot oblige you to a care of yourself?  What a pleasant distinction you make when you say that ’tis not melancholy makes you do these things, but a careless forgetfulness.  Did ever anybody forget themselves to that degree that was not melancholy in extremity?  Good God! how you are altered; and what is it that has done it?  I have known you when of all the things in the world you would not have been taken for a discontent; you were, as I thought, perfectly pleased with your condition; what has made it so much worse since?  I know nothing you have lost, and am sure you have gained a friend that is capable of the highest degree of friendship you can propound, that has already given an entire heart for that which she received, and ’tis no more in her will than in her power ever to recall it or divide it; if this be not enough to satisfy you, tell me what I can do more?

There are a great many ingredients must go to the making me happy in a husband.  First, as my cousin Franklin says, our humours must agree; and to do that he must have that kind of breeding that I have had, and used that kind of company.  That is, he must not be so much a country gentleman as to understand nothing but hawks and dogs, and be fonder of either than his wife; nor of the next sort of them whose aim reaches no further than to be Justice of the Peace, and once in his life High Sheriff, who reads no book but statutes, and studies nothing but how to make a speech interlarded with Latin that may amaze his disagreeing poor neighbours, and fright them rather than persuade them into quietness.  He must not be a thing that began the world in a free school, was sent from thence to the university, and is at his furthest when he reaches the Inns of Court, has no acquaintance but those of his form in these places, speaks the French he has picked out of old laws, and admires nothing but the stories he has heard of the revels that were kept there before his time.  He must not be a town gallant neither, that lives in a tavern and an ordinary, that cannot imagine how an hour should be spent without company unless it be in sleeping, that makes court to all the women he sees, thinks they believe him, and laughs and is laughed at equally.  Nor a travelled Monsieur whose head is all feather inside and outside, that can talk of nothing but dances and duets, and has courage enough to wear slashes when every one else dies with cold to see him.  He must not be a fool of no sort, nor peevish, nor ill-natured, nor proud, nor covetous; and to all this must be added, that he must love me and I him as much as we are capable of loving.  Without all this, his fortune, though never so great, would not satisfy me; and with it, a very moderate one would keep me from ever repenting my disposal.