The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV., page 169 by Various Authors
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t rate if you come with us. For my part, I don't pretend to be so very exact. I believe in the spirit more than the letter, and our clergyman don't find any fault with me. What say you, will you call on him? If yes, I will open up a little plan which I have this moment concocted for your particular benefit. But you must first become a churchman.
Hiram sat stupefied, horrified, in a trance, in a maze. Cast loose from his church, within whose pale he was accustomed to think salvation could only be found, the possibility that there might be hope for him in another quarter nearly took away his senses. He had been accustomed to regard the Episcopalians as little better than Papists, and they were the veritable children of wrath. Could he have been mistaken? He was now willing to hope so. It could certainly do no harm to confer with the clergyman. He would hear what he had to say, and then judge for himself, and so he told his cousin.
'All right; you talk like a sensible man. Now, Hiram, between us two, I am going to find you a wife.'
Hiram started. His pulse began again to beat naturally.
'Yes, I have found you a wife, that is, if you will do as I advise you, instead of following your own head. I tell you what it is, Hiram; you're green in these matters.'
Hiram smiled an incredulous smile, and asked, in a tone which betrayed a good deal of interest, 'Who is the young lady?'
'Never mind who she is until you come over to us. Then my wife shall introduce you. But I'll tell you this much, Hiram: she has a clear two hundred thousand dollars--no father, no mother, already of age, in our first society, and very aristocratic.'
'Is she pious?' asked Hiram, eagerly.
'Excessively so. Fact is, she is the strictest young woman in the church in--Lent. She belongs to all the charitable societies, and gives away I don't know how much.'
'Humph,' responded Hiram. The last recommendation did not seem specially to take with him. Still his eyes glistened at the recita