" But a hooped skirt with a history, touching and teaching, is no theme for flippancy; so, by your leave, I will unwind my story tenderly, and with reverential regard for its smooth turns of sequence.

In such cases he or they must wisely and warily unwind themselves, unsettle his affections by those rules above prescribed, quin stultos excutit ignes, divert his cogitations, or else bravely bear it out, as Turnus did, Tua sit Lavinia conjux, when he could not get her, with a kind of heroical scorn he bid Aeneas take her, or with a milder farewell, let her go.