ordination, and returning to Charleston consented to officiate.
"The marriage shocked the moral sense of the community very much, and the second wife, it was well known, was often troubled in her own mind about it. But the example nevertheless had weight, and became a precedent, followed at first by one and then another; the public mind each time revolting less and less, until such matches have become to be not only justified by many, but commended and preferred by some, and even advised by dying wives, one of whom, some years ago, joined the hands of her husband and her sister over her own dying bed, and gave them to each other! Whether this was because she saw they would marry, whether or no, may be a question. At any rate, now when a man's wife dies, the first idea of many if she leaves a sister is, that the widower will marry her. And he is almost regarded as wanting in due respect for her if he do not at least give her a chance of becoming her sister's successor. The plea on which these unions are recommended is, that the sister being already attached to the children of the previous marriage, and acquainted with the ways of the deceased, is better qualified and disposed than any one else could be to take her place and train up her offspring.
"But it is evident to those of us who are old enough to remember the state of things previously to this innovation, that it has brought about already a change for the worse. I can well recollect when ladies in the lifetimes of their husbands used to feel as if their brothers-in-law were their own brothers, and to treat them accordingly, in all the unreserve of domestic intercourse; when a brother-in-law, after an absence, would kiss his brother's wife 'in all purity' as his own sister, and she would confide in him without a thought of evil, or a feeling of embarrassment;
