How people with families continue to live is
a mystery to me; and people still going on marrying, in the face of
national debt, taxes, a new war, a starving population, ruined commerce,
and no outlet for young men in any quarter--God only knows what is to be
the end of all this! In spite of all this, these thoughtless young
creatures, the Truemans, have thought proper to make out their marriage;
he is just five-and-twenty, and she is not yet nineteen! so you may
judge what a prudent, well-managed establishment it will be. He is in a
good enough business at present, but in these times who can tell what's
to happen? He may be wallowing in wealth to-day, and bankrupt to-morrow.
His sister's marriage with Fairplay is now quite off, and her prospects
for life, poor thing, completely wrecked! Her looks are entirely gone,
and her spirits quite broken. She is not like the same creature, and, to
be sure, to a girl who had set her heart upon being married, it must be
a great and severe disappointment, for this was her only chance, unless
she tries India, and the expense of the outfit must be a complete bar to
that. You would hear that poor Lady Oldhouse has had a son--it seemed a
desirable thing, situated as they are with an entailed property; and yet
when I look around me, and see the way that sons go on, the dissipation
and extravagance, and the heartbreak they are to their parents, I think
a son anything but a blessing.
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