ple-hearted, and much given, the whole party, to bursts of hearty
laughter, and a habit of perpetually joking with each other. There might
be more in them than this, but I had not found it: I doubted much if it
were worth the finding. I came from a town in Massachusetts, where, as
in most New-England villages, there was more mental power than was
needed for the work that was to be done, and which reacted constantly on
itself in a way which my husband called unwholesome; it was no wonder,
therefore, that these people seemed to me but clogs of flesh, the mere
hands by which the manual work of the world's progress was to be
accomplished. I had hinted this to Doctor Manning one day, but he only
replied by the dry, sad smile with which it had become his habit of late
to listen to my speculations. It had cost me no pain thus to label and
set aside his children: but for himself it was different; he was my
husband. He was the only thing in the world which I had never weighed
and valued to estimate how much it was worth to me: some feeling I could
not define had kept me from it until now. But I did it that evening: I
remember how the cool river-air blew in the window-curtain, and I held
it back, looking steadily in at the thick-set, middle-aged figure of the
man sitting there, in the lamp-light, dressed in rough gray: peering at
the leather-colored skin, the nervous features of the square face, at
the scanty fringe of iron-gray whisker, and the curly wig which he had
bought after we were married, thinking to please me, at the brown eyes,
with the gentle reticent look in them belonging to a man or beast who is
thorough "game"; taking the whole countenance as the metre of the man;
going sharply over the salient points of our life together, measuring
myself by him, as if to know--what? to know what it would cost me to
lose him. God be merciful to me, what thought was this? Oh, the wrench
in heart and brain that came then! A man who has done a murder may feel
as I did while I stood for the next half-hour looking at the red lights
of the boats going up and down the Hudson, in the darkening fog.

After a while Teddy came waddling out on the porch, in his usual uncouth
fashion, and began pulling at my cape.

"You're getting cold, mother. Come in. Come!"

I remember how I choked as I tried to answer him, and, patting his
gilt-buttoned coat, took the fat chapped little hands in mine, kissing
them at last. I was so hungry for affection t