Three generations

AN OLD MAN OF THIRTY-FIVE! 43
when I come to reckon how old he must have been at
the date when he wooed and won her, I find that the
" old man " of my imagination and my mother's
estimate could not have been more than from thirty-
five to forty — in the prime of manhood. However,
manhood was soon reached and overstepped in the
days when William Pitt ruled England in his twenties,
and Oliver Goldsmith made " Sir William Thornhill "
masquerade as " Burchell " in the " Vicar of Wake-
field," so tired with the polite world by the time he
was thirty as to vacate his place in honour of his
unworthy nephew.
The effect of my uncle's advanced years on the shy,
proud young girl he took to wife was to convert her
at once into the most dignified and discreet of young
matrons. This suited him admirably, while he was
the most indulgent of husbands, fulfilling to the
letter the recommendation in Joanna Baillie's song :
" Half husband, I ween, and half daddy,
As humour inconstantly leans ;
The chield he had need to be steady
Who yokes with a mate in her teens."
He had decided views on what a married woman
should be. He was proud of his young wife's beauty
— perfect in its severe style — and he would not suffer it
to be diminished by any frippery or foolery of dress.
He had sufficient influence over her to imbue her with
his excellence of taste. Her gowns, good in material,
were of the soberest and plainest in colour and
fashion. Her matron's cap, in accordance with his
judgment, was destitute of fluttering ribbon or arti-
ficial flower. It was of simple net, the border pinned
beneath her chin. She might have been a Puritan or
a Quakeress.