earnestly warn her from a tottering bridge or bad investment.
If she were to marry some one else, how you would tremble for
her fate! If she were only your sister, and you thought half
as much of her, how doubtfully would you entrust her future to
a man no better than yourself!

Times are changed with him who marries; there are no more
by-path meadows, where you may innocently linger, but the road
lies long and straight and dusty to the grave. Idleness,
which is often becoming and even wise in the bachelor, begins
to wear a different aspect when you have a wife to support.
Suppose, after you are married, one of those little slips were
to befall you. What happened last November might surely
happen February next. They may have annoyed you at the time,
because they were not what you had meant; but how will they
annoy you in the future, and how will they shake the fabric of
your wife's confidence and peace! A thousand things
unpleasing went on in the CHIAROSCURO of a life that you
shrank from too particularly realising; you did not care, in
those days, to make a fetish of your conscience; you would
recognise your failures with a nod, and so, good day. But the
time for these reserves is over. You have wilfully introduced
a witness into your life, the scene of these defeats, and can
no longer close the mind's eye upon uncomely passages, but
must stand up straight and put a name upon your actions. And
your witness is not only the judge, but the victim of your
sins; not only can she condemn you to the sharpest penalties,
but she must herself share feelingly in their endurance. And
observe, once more, with what temerity you have chosen
precisely HER to be your spy, whose esteem you value highest,