But always there was the same promise, the same expectation, and the same disappointment.  I used to think I would as soon marry Hoffman’s machine, who looked so beautiful, and said, “Ah! ah!” and the husband thought her very sensible.  But Hoffman’s husband thought he had an admiring wife, and her “ah! ah-s!” were appreciative, whereas Mr. Lewis could be under no such delusion.  Once I heard him say, “he cared only for love in a wife:  intellect he could find in books, but the heart only in woman.”  “Eyes that look kindly on me are full of good sense,—­lips that part over pearls are better than wisdom,—­and the heart-beat is the measure of true life.”

He liked to talk in this proverb-fashion, and would often turn towards his wife, giving his remarks point and affectionate direction by smoothing her curls or gently touching her shoulder.  He was very happy in her beauty.

Notwithstanding this, he often brought in books of an evening, to read to us, leaving Lulu to get her entertainment as she could, and would sometimes sit a whole hour, discussing literary points with me, and metaphysical ones with the Dominie, who was only too happy to pull the Scotch professors over the coals, and lead to condign execution Brown, Reid, and Stewart, in their turn.  Sometimes Lulu would come in, with a bird on each hand, and sit at our feet.  She then never mingled in the conversation, but just smoothed the birds’ plumage, or fed them with crumbs from her own lips, like a child, or a princess trifling in the harem.

Once we were at Hoboken, where we had passed most of the warm day, and, being weary with strolling among the trees, had seated ourselves on a bank, whence we had a good view of the water and the vessels in the hazy distance.  Mr. Lewis took Wordsworth from his pocket, and read aloud the “Ode to Immortality.”  It was so beautiful, and the images of “the calm sea that brought us hither” so suggestive, that we listened with rapture.  Lulu twined oak-leaves into wreaths, sitting at her husband’s feet.  I don’t know whether she heard or not, but, as we discussed afterwards the various beauties of the expression, and the exquisite thoughts, Mr. Lewis leaned over and laid his hand lightly on his wife’s hair.  He had done it a hundred times before.  But to-day she shook her head away from him, blushed angrily, and said, “Don’t, William!  I am not a baby!”

VIII.

We stayed in New York over ten days.  In that time we seemed to have known the Lewises ten years.  In the last three days I had some new views, however, and puzzled myself over manners which were apparently contradictory.

Lulu had told me in the morning that her husband was going to Philadelphia, and wouldn’t be back for two days.  I asked her if she were not going with him.  She said, no,—­that she wouldn’t encounter the dust of those Jersey wagons again; and then described, with much vivacity, the method of transportation which was soon after succeeded by the present railroad.