You would leave to her a possession that is not to be despised--a safe business, and, perchance, you have also chosen for her a worthy, honest, hard-working, sensible young man, on whose arm she can wander along life's quiet path to the very end.

But her destiny is no longer in your power.

The girl, unfortunately, springs from a family in whose blood flightiness may be said to have run from the very beginning.

She was educated in a school which encouraged ambition, extravagance, and the love of luxury, and the later and more rigorous years of her life have only suppressed, not extinguished, her earlier impressions and recollections.

She was wont to see vice feted and sobriety ridiculed.
That, sir, is a bad apprenticeship, and it requires no ordinary strength of mind to call that which seems so sweet, bitter, and that which seems so bitter, sweet.