They will come bearing gifts--not the silver
cup, if you please, but the Deferred Annuity. 'I bring you, my dear,
in honour of your little Molly's birthday, an increase of five pounds
to her Deferred Annuity. This makes it up to twenty pounds, and the
money-box getting on, you say, to another pound. Capital! we shall
have her thirty-five pounds in no time now.' What a noble field for
the uncle!
The endowment of the daughter is essentially a woman's question. The
bride, or at least her mother for her, ought to consider that, though
every family quiver varies in capacity with the income, her own lot
may be to have a quiver full. Heaven forbid, as Montaigne said, that
we should interfere with the feminine methods, but common prudence
seems to dictate the duty of this forecast. Let, therefore, the demand
for endowment come from the bride's mother. All that she would be
justified in asking of a man whose means are as yet narrow, would be
such an endowment, gradually purchased, as would keep the girls from
starvation.
For my own part, I think that no woman should be forced to work at
all, except at such things as please her. When a woman marries, for
instance, she voluntarily engages herself to do a vast quantity of
work.
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