solutely, this time, with the intricate difficulties of the law. I was
called to the Bar. My wife's father aided me with his interest, and I
started into practice without difficulty and without delay.

For the next twenty years my married life was a scene of happiness and
prosperity, on which I now look back with a grateful tenderness that
no words of mine can express. The memory of my wife is busy at my heart
while I think of those past times. The forgotten tears rise in my eyes
again, and trouble the course of my pen while it traces these simple
lines.

Let me pass rapidly over the one unspeakable misery of my life; let me
try to remember now, as I tried to remember then, that she lived to see
our only child--our son, who was so good to her, who is still so good to
me--grow up to manhood; that her head lay on my bosom when she died; and
that the last frail movement of her hand in this world was the movement
that brought it closer to her boy's lips.

I bore the blow--with God's help I bore it, and bear it still. But it
struck me away forever from my hold on social life; from the purposes
and pursuits, the companions and the pleasures of twenty years, which
her presence had sanctioned and made dear to me. If my son George had
desired to follow my profession, I should still have struggled against
myself, and have kept my place in the world until I had seen h im
prosperous and settled. But his choice led him to the army; and before
his mother's death he had obtained his commission, and had entered on
his path in life. No other responsibility remained to claim from me the
sacrifice of myself; my brothers had made my place ready for me by
their fireside; my heart yearned, in its desolation, for the friends and
companions of the old boyish days; my good, brave son promised that no
year should pass, as long as he was in England, without his coming
to cheer me; and so it happened that I, in my turn, withdrew from the
world, which had once been a bright and a happy world to me, and retired
to end my days, peacefully, contentedly, and gratefully, as my brothers
are ending theirs, in the solitude of The Glen Tower.

How many years have passed since we have all three been united it is not
necessary to relate. It will be more to the purpose if I briefly record
that we have never been separated since the day which first saw us
assembled together in our hillside retreat; that we have never yet
wearied of the time, of the place, or