"She is small and slim, but all in fine proportion from top to toe.
To see her sit down, to see her get up, and especially to see her walk, is enough to satisfy any man in his senses that the graces of her figure (if you will pardon me the expression) are in her flesh, and not in her clothes. Her hair is dark, and it matches her eyes. Her mouth and chin are morsels for the gods; her complexion is always nice to look at. Add to the foregoing that she carries her head as upright as a dart, in a dashing,spirited, through-bred way - that she has a clear voice, and a smile that begins very prettily in her eyes before it gets to her lips.
And what about her disposition next? Has this charming creature no faults? She has just as many faults as we all do, neither more or less.
Possessing a host of graces and attractions, has one defect, which strict impartiality compels me to acknowledge. She is unlike most other girls of her age, in this - that she has ideas of her own, and is stiff-necked enough to set the fashions themselves at defiance, if the fashions don't suit her views. In trifles, this importance of hers is all well enough; but in matters of women twice her age judge in general; never asks your advice; never tell you beforehand what she is going to do; never comes with secrets and confidences to anybody, from her grandmother downward. In little things and great, with people she loves, and people she hates (and she does both with equal heartiness), she always goes on a way of her own, sufficient for herself in the joys and sorrows of her life.
"Althea's best friend and Althea's worst enemy are, one and the other - Althea herself."
With all her secrecy, and all her self-will, there is not so much as the shadow of any thing false in her. I never remember her breaking her word; I never remember her saying No, and meaning Yes. I can call to mind, in her childhood, more than on one occasion when the good little soul took the blame, and suffered the punishment, for some fault committed by a playfellow whom she loved. Nobody ever knew her to confess to it when the thing was found out, and she was charged with it afterward. But nobody knew her to lie about it, either. She looked you straight in the face and shook her little head, and said, plainly, "I won't tell you!" Punished again for this, she would own to being sorry for saying "won't", but notwithstanding, she never told you. Self-willed-devilish self-willed sometimes - but the finest creature, nevertheless, that ever walked ways of this world.
Perhaps
you think you see a certain contradiction here? In that case, study your wife(or else) closely for the next 24 hours. If your good lady doesn't exhibit something in the shape of a contradiction in that time, Heaven help you! - you've married a monster!"