The Argosy — page 61: what you’re looking at

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

The Mother of Lord Macaulay. 51 with no favour on her choice. There was too great a savour of the adventurer to please them about this young man from the African coast. His opinions about the slave trade had not yet begun.to be very widely spread. He was no great match in the way of family, for his Scotch ancestry boasted rather of ministers who preached long sermons than of chieftains who fought with long swords. He was no great match in the way of money, for there was something too chival- rous about him for the idea to be entertained that he could ever give his mind much to collecting wealth for himself. No, he was not the husband they wanted for their pretty Selina. But ‘* He who stems a stream with sand, Or binds a flame with flaxen band, Has yet a harder task to prove, By stern resolve to conquer love,” was as true as usual in this case. The lovers had made up their minds, and nothing could shake them. Hannah More, who still regarded her old pupil with almost motherly affection, and who was at once interested in the matter, invited Selina to stay with her at Barley Wood, and asked Mr. Macaulay to meet her there. Finding him the sort of man she liked and approved of, although he was not exactly a Ccelebs, she at once decidedly favoured the match. Miss Patty, it is true, having just got some new crotchet into her head about woman living for female friendship alone, "at first made some mild opposition ; but then no one at Barley Wood thought any more of certain periodical sentimental fancies with which Patty was seized than they would have done of the caprices of a pet poodle. So the lovers were allowed to spend the morning together in the garden with a difficult book as a convenient reason, and to sit side by side in the twilight, while Hannah dozed accommodatingly, without the slightest molestation. At length the steadfastness of the lovers and Hannah More’s inter- cession were victorious, and the pair were allowed to be openly engaged. But Selina’s family would not hear of her going out to Africa with her husband: so a long period of weary waiting and separation had to be passed through by her while Mr. Macaulay went abroad for the final winding-up of his affairs in that foreign land : a land, in those days of no steamers and no telegraphs, much more distant and. mysteriously indistinct to the mind’s eye of those at home in England than it is now. This time of absence was, however, rendered more endurable to the young promised wife by her spending part of it at Rothley Temple, in Leicestershire, with her lover's sister, Mrs. Babington. These days of anxious trial were at last over for Selina. Zachary Macaulay returned home in safety, and they were married. The first year of their wedded life was spent in London. It must have been a comicbooks.com)