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Untitled Article
performance of the contract , or a state of endurance which cannot be read of or imagined without acute sympathy or irrepressible indignation . Where was the fault ? Was it in their original training , which unfitted them for the correct discernment and
appreciation of character ? Was it in the notions and customs which precluded opportunities for their knowledge of character to be sufficiently complete , which cover with a veil of deceptiveness all ante-nuptial intercourse between the sexes ? Was it in weariness of that life of pupilage and dependence which a woman leads in her father ' s house ? or in influences parental or social , bearing them along , as soon as a yet undetermined preference was felt or fancied , to the goal of marriage ? Was it in the nominal irrevocability of the rite itself which practically the course of events compelled them to revoke or perish , perish by lingering tortures of the mind and heart ? Whether it were any or all of these , certain it is that dreary were the destinies of the sisters of the Wesleyan Patriarch , and the dreariest of them all was that of Mehetabel .
Of Mehetabel ' s love affair little is told . It only appears that it was terminated by the interposition of her father , and that her lover was not worthy of her , for he tamely gave her up when she saw that the obstacle was not insurmountable . The dastard deserved to lose a woman whom few men deserved to gain , although she committed the error of reckoning one amongst that few who only belonged to the many . Had events been allowed to take their natural course , such a mistake as this
would not have been irretrievable . With the intelligence which she now possessed , and with all the strength , yet the purity and the depth , as well as quickness of her feelings , no being capable of that desertion could long have imposed on her imagination . Her heart would have required something more and better , and if not fettered by factitious tenets , whose immorality is shown in their miserable consequences , she would have hoarded her love , until the Bassanio came whom the instinct of
a kindred nature would have guided unerringly to the casket which contained the treasure . But it is sad to reflect that had she escaped the lot which awaited her , she would yet not have been allowed thua to fulfil her destiny . She would still have been precipitated into marriage , and one species of misery would only have been exchanged for another . But to return to the history .
In the bitterness of disappointment she made a vow to marry the first man who offered himaelf to her . A Vow I Will not the time come when people will ask , What is that ? And will they not be astonished to find that one branch of religion at one time consisted in the solemn renunciation of the free agency of the individual , at a certain future period , or under certain defined circumstances , whatever might be the intermediate accession of
Untitled Article
A Victim . 171
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1833, page 171, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2610/page/27/
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