and the consummation of our plans for
the future; but, as "the best made plans of mice and men aft gang aglee,"
we found ourselves no nearer the goal. One day he said to me: "Mary, we
have waited to be richer, but have still grown poorer; so is it not best
that, in defiance of our apparently adverse fate, we unite our interests
and our lives?" So hand in hand we resolved to share the joys and sorrows
of life, each catching the burden of the old refrain--

"Thy smile could make a summer
Where darkness else would be."

We repaired to the house of Dr. O.H. Tiffany, and, in the presence of a
few friends, were quietly married, after which we made an unostentatious
wedding trip to Wisconsin to visit some of his family friends.

With them all the "wonder grew" why it was that, among the many smiles
hitherto lavished upon him from beautiful eyes, he should have chosen the
blind girl. His reiterated assertion of faith in the purity and
unselfishness of the life, and the inner light of the soul, found in them
a ready acceptance of his choice, and they warmly extended to her all the
confidence and affection of kindred hearts.

CHAPTER XVI.

"To know, to esteem, to love, and then to _part_,
Makes up life's tale to many a feeling heart."

A short time after our marriage Mr. Arms was offered a contract to
superintend the construction of a mill at Woodbine, Iowa, which it seemed
best for him to accept; and finding there were no comfortable
accommodations for a lady in that place, he left me in a boarding house in
Chicago, with Hattie for a companion. It was indeed hard for us to part so
soon, and the pang was rendered more bitter by the fact of his impaired
health, for he had never entirely recovered from the effects of the
malarial fever contracted in a miasmatic district in Indiana.

After his departure time hung so heavily upon my hands, my present
aimless, carefree life being in such striking contrast to the activity and
excitement of travel, that I secretly resolved, as separation was
inevitable, to resume my old life, and thus be of assistance to my
husband. Unknown to him I wrote to my publishers for a fresh supply of
books, and started for Michigan, the State which held within its
boundaries the first scenes of sorrow my young life had known, when, amid
helpless and hopeless hours of persecution, my girlhood seemed rayless and
forsaken, but when kind friends had come in the hour of need, and hel