Chapter XIII.—Being Urged by His
Mother to Take a Wife, He Sought a Maiden that Was Pleasing Unto
Him.
23. Active efforts were made to get me a wife. I
wooed, I was engaged, my mother taking the greatest pains in the
matter, that when I was once married, the health-giving baptism
might cleanse me; for which she rejoiced that I was being daily
fitted, remarking that her desires and Thy promises were being
fulfilled in my faith. At which time, verily, both at my request
and her own desire, with strong heartfelt cries did we daily beg of
Thee that Thou wouldest by a vision disclose unto her something
concerning my future marriage; but Thou wouldest not. She saw
indeed certain vain and fantastic things, such as the earnestness
of a human spirit, bent thereon, conjured up; and these she told me
of, not with her usual confidence when Thou hadst shown her
anything, but slighting them. For she could, she declared, through
some feeling which she could not express in words, discern the
difference betwixt Thy revelations and the dreams of her own
spirit. Yet the affair was pressed on, and a maiden sued who wanted
two years of the marriageable age; and, as she was pleasing, she
was waited for.