The Argosy — page 60: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

50 The Mother of Lord Macaulay. entertained considerable fears of dying some day in a fit of yawning), there is no denying the high moral intention of the book, as, indeed, of all Hannah More's works. Her soul was anchored in the harbour of Eternal peace, and it was quite impossible for any girl to be long near her without her trying to bring the young spirit into the same safe resting place. Selina’s nature was peculiarly ready to obey such a call, and from that time forward her Lord became not only her Master but her Friend. : When, at length, Selina Mills left school, she went well endowed for the journey of life. She had an intellect which, though it was not creative, was peculiarly receptive ; the safest attribute perhaps of the two for the mind of a woman. She had graces of person which, though they did not dazzle, attracted softly, and held all the more firmly those drawn towards her. She had assured to herself the title deeds of her inheritance in the Everlasting City. In the days when Selina Mills made her first entrance into society, there was only one possible future open to a young lady. She could not write books, because no young woman in her station ever did such a thing. Hannah More had certainly done it, but then Hannah was the exception which there always must be to prove every rule. She could not devote herself to visiting the poor in back streets, or teaching in ragged schools, because the very clergy themselves would have opened their reverend eyes wide enough, had they been told that such were their duties. She could not start to travel alone around the world, unless she wanted to be followed by a band of all her male relations, and brought back to a lunatic asylum. There was then nothing left for her but matrimony. Selina Mills had of course to comply with the common order of things, and to look out fora husband. Unluckily, however, none of the gentlemen in Bristol or its neighbourhood were to her taste, and her heart strongly objected to her hand being given without it ; though her family, it seems, would not have disliked the arrangement. Such things were done every day in the eighteenth century as they are in the nineteenth. At length there came upon the scene where Selina was playing the heroine, and no doubt beginning to find the fact of there being no hero somewhat dull, a certain Zachary Macaulay. He came from the coast of Africa, fresh from a life of stirring adventure. He had been fighting hand to hand with the infernal power of the slave trade, a fact which was in itself enough to kindle the fancy of any high-souled woman concerning him. He stood on a lofty pinnacle of moral and religious principle. How he managed it we do not exactly know ; perhaps, considering the experiences of his past life, he wooed her something after the Othello fashion, but certain it is that this Zachary Macaulay took the heart of Selina at once by storm. But her relations looked comicbooks.com