Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 November 1883 — Seven Years’ Courtship. [ARTICLE]

Seven Years’ Courtship.

Mr. Ruskin, in “Lost Jewels,” the latest of his ’‘Letters to the Workmen and Laborersof Great Britain,” discourses on “the annual loss of its girlwealth the British Most of the letter is concered with courtship and marriage. “The whole meaning and powers of courtship,” says the author, “is Probation; and it oughtn’t to be shorter than three years at least—seven is, to my mind, th| orthodox time.” The courtship of the celebrated Rev. John Newton, who in early life was a seaman and slave-trader, would doubtless meet Mr. Ruskin’s approval: John Newton fell in love with a Kentish maid at first sight. The girl was under 14 years of age; hut such was the impression she made on young Newton, that his affection for her appears to have equalled all that the writers of romance have imagined. When in distant parts of the word, the thought of her checked him in a profligate career. When sinking on the coast of Africa into a wretched state of slavery, and when ready to put an end to his life the thought of her aroused him to en> ergy and inspired him with hope. All the oppression and scenes of misery and wickedness through which he had to pass never banished her for a single hour from his waking thoughts for the following seven years. When he lived in London, he would repair twich a week to Shooter’s Hill, and from the top of that eminence comfort himself by a distant view of the district in which his loyed oue lived. Not that he could see the spot itself, which was in reality too remote; hut it gratified him even to look toward the spot. She eventually became the bright star of his life.