Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
your Robinson Crusoes, and such other trumpery. No, no, no! child; it is money
makes the mare go; keep your eye upon the main chance, Mary.
MARIA
Marriage, Sir, is, indeed, a very serious aair.
VAN ROUGH
You are right, child; you are right. I am sure I found it so, to my cost.
MARIA
I mean, Sir, that as marriage is a portion for life, and so intimately involves our
happiness, we cannot be too considerate in the choice of our companion.
VAN ROUGH
Right, child; very right. A young woman should be very sober when she is making
her choice, but when she has once made it, as you have done, I don’t see why she
should not be as merry as a grig; I am sure she has reason enough to be so. Solomon
says that “there is a time to laugh, and a time to weep.” Now, a time for a young
woman to laugh is when she has made sure of a good rich husband. Now, a time
to cry, according to you, Mary, is when she is making choice of him; but I should
think that a young woman’s time to cry was when she despaired of getting one.
Why, there was your mother, now: to be sure, when I popp’d the question to her
she did look a little silly; but when she had once looked down on her apron-strings,
as all modest young women us’d to do, and drawled out ye-s, she was as brisk and
as merry as a bee.
MARIA
My honoured mother, Sir, had no motive to melancholy; she married the man of
her choice.
VAN ROUGH
The man of her choice! And pray, Mary, an’t you going to marry the man of your
choice—what trumpery notion is this? It is these vile books [throwing them away].
I’d have you to know, Mary, if you won’t make young Van Dumpling the man of
your choice, you shall marry him as the man of my choice.
MARIA
You terrify me, Sir. Indeed, Sir, I am all submission. My will is yours.
VAN ROUGH
Why, that is the way your mother us’d to talk. “My will is yours, my dear Mr. Van
Rough, my will is yours”; but she took special care to have her own way, though,
for all that.
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