pen glass door; at
dog Rover, propped up against the lintel, chopping at the early flies;
at the flower-garden, dark and dewy; at the black wall of forest
beyond, in which the magpies were beginning to pipe cheerily; at the
blessed dawn which was behind and above it, shooting long rays of
primrose and crimson half-way up the zenith; hearing the sleepy
ceaseless crawling of the river over the shingle bars; hearing the
booming of the cattle-herds far over the plain; hearing the chirrup of
the grasshopper among the raspberries, the chirr of the cicada among
the wattles--what happy morning is this? Is it the Sabbath?

Ah, no! the Sabbath was yesterday. This is his wedding morn.

My dear brother bachelor, do you remember those old first-love
sensations, or have you got too old, and too fat? Do you remember the
night when you parted from her on the bridge by the lock, the night
before her father wrote to you and forbade you the house? Have you got
the rose she gave you there? Is it in your Bible, brother? Do you
remember the months that followed--months of mad grief and wild
yearning, till the yearning grew less--less wild--and the grief less
desperate; and then, worst of all, the degrading consciousness that you
were, in spite of yourself, getting rid of your love, and that she was
not to you as she had been? Do you remember all this? When you come
across the rose in your Bible, do you feel that you would give all the
honour and wealth of the world to feel again those happy, wretched, old
sensations? Do you not say that this world has nothing to give in
comparison to that?

Not this world, I believe. You and I can never feel that again. So let
us make up our minds to it--it is dead. In God's name don't let us try
to galvanize an old corpse, which may rise upon us hideous, and scare
us to the lower pit. Let us be content as we are. Let us read that Book
we spoke of just now with the rose in it, and imitate the Perfect Man
there spoken of, who was crucified 1800 years ago, believing, like Him,
that all men are our brothers, and acting up to it. And then, Lord
knows what may be in store for us.

Here's a digression. If I had had a good wife to keep me in order, I
never should have gone so far out of the road. Here is Sam in bed,
sitting up, with his happy head upon his hands, trying to believe that
this dream of love is going to be realized--trying to believe that it
is really his wedding morn.

It evidently is; so he get