With books and music, painting and flowers, we passed the happy
moments of the honeymoon. I yielded as little of myself and my mind
to my office and clients, in that period, as I possibly could. My
cottage was my paradise. My habits, as might be inferred from my
history, were singularly domestic. Doomed, as I had been, from my
earliest years, to know neither friends nor parents; isolated, in
my infancy, from all those tender ties which impress upon the heart,
for all succeeding years, tokens of the most endearing affection;
denied the smiles of those who yet filled my constant sight--my
life was a long yearning for things of love--for things to love!
While the struggle continued between Julia's parents and myself,
though confiding in her love, I had yet no confidence in my own
hope to realize and to secure it. Now that it was mine--mine, at
last--I grew uxorious in its contemplation. Like the miser, I had
my treasure at home, and I hastened home to survey it with precisely
the same doubts, and hopes, and fears, which the disease of avarice
prompts in the unhappy heart of its victim To this disease, in
chief, I have to attribute all my future sorrows; but the time
is not yet for that. It is my joys now that I have to contemplate
and describe. How I dwelt, and how I dreamed! how I seemed to tread
on air, in the unaccustomed fullness of my spirit! how my whole
soul, given up to the one pursuit, I fondly fancied had secured
its object! I fancied--nay, for the time, I was happy! Surely, I
was happy!