The Recitation

My father hugged me every time he taught me something that mattered, and this mattered more than anything else he ever gave me. Curious Luckyfeller was not a hard gnome. He was patient in ways I did not fully appreciate until years after I'd left home, the kind of patient that comes from choosing kindness on purpose, every single day, and never letting anyone talk him out of it. The day before I was to petition for my first courtship, he sat me down in the workshop and made me repeat each of the Seven Rules back to him until I had them by heart, not because he doubted me, but because he wanted to be certain I would never have to reach for them and come up empty. Everything I lost when I lost my home, I kept this. Nobody can exile a man from what a father gives him with both hands and no conditions attached.

The Recitation

Among gnomes, no betrothal is considered bound by more than paperwork until it has been spoken aloud, in front of witnesses, by the father of the groom. We call this the Recitation, and it is older than any gnome alive, older than Clockworks City itself, back to when families lived in burrows and a man's word was the only contract that mattered.

The father stands the couple before the gathered families. He does not bless them yet. First he recites the Seven Rules, one at a time, and the groom repeats each one back before the next is given. It is slow. It is meant to be slow. A boy in a hurry to be married has usually not yet understood what he is agreeing to.

If the father is dead, or estranged, or otherwise unfit to stand, an elder of the family takes his place, and everyone in the room knows exactly why, and nobody says a word about it. I have stood in that spot myself, twice now, for cousins whose fathers I will not name. It is not shameful to need a substitute. It is only shameful to have no one willing to stand at all.

The Seven Rules of Family Government

As my father gave them to me, and as I have given them since, badly, to people who did not ask for my opinion on their love lives:
First, become the One before you try to govern a family, meaning govern yourself, serve others, before you presume to lead a household.

Second, choose a mate for genuine virtue, kindness, modesty, industry, honesty, self-government, never for beauty or the cut of her coat.

Third, obtain the partner lawfully and honorably, through her father's council, never around it.

Fourth, never betray a confidence, not even the small ones, especially not the small ones.

Fifth, never speak of the faults of those close to you to anyone outside the family. Correct only in private, and only with kindness.

Sixth, avoid anger, avoid a peevish disposition most of all inside your own walls, and do not fault-find over trifles that will not matter in a year.

Seventh, practice impartiality. Let love and kindness abound. Never let feeling override principle, no matter how strongly you feel it in the moment.

Seven rules.
My father said a man could build an entire life on them and still have rope left over.
I did not believe him then.
I have buried enough people since to believe him now.