If a man marry once for love, he is a fool to expect he may do so twice—it cannot be: therefore, I say, in the choice of a second wife, one scruple of prudence is worth a pound of passion. I do not assert that he should have an eye to dowry; for unless it is a great sum, such as will keep all the family in gentility, I think a small fortune one of the greatest faults a young woman can have; not that I object to the money on its own account, but only to its effects in the airs and vanities it begets in the silly maiden, especially if her husband profits by it.

For this reason I did not choose my second wife from the instincts of fondness, nor for her parentage, nor for her fortune; neither was I deluded by fair looks. I had, as I have said, my firstborn needing tendance; and my means were small, while my cares were great. I accordingly looked about for a sagacious woman—one that not only knew the use of needles and shears, but that the skirt of an old green coat might, for lack of other stuff, be a clout to the knees of blue trousers—and such a one I found in the niece of my friend and neighbour, Mr. Zerobabel L. Hoskins, a most respectable farmer, from Vermont, who had come to New York about a cod-fish adventure that he had sent to the Mediterranean, and was waiting with his wife and niece the returns from Sicily.

This old Mr. Hoskins was, in his way, something of a Yankee oddity. He was tall, thin, and of an anatomical figure, with a long chin, ears like trenchers, lengthy jaws, and a nose like a schooner's cut-water. His hair was lank and oily, the tie of his cravat was always dislocated, and he wore an old white beaver hat turned up behind. His long bottle-green surtout, among other defects, lacked a button on the left promontory of his hinder parts, and in the house he always tramped in slippers.