Through all, your heart cleaves to that sweet image of the beloved Madge, as light cleaves to day.  The weeks leap with a bound; and the months only grow long when you approach that day which is to make her yours.  There are no flowers rare enough to make bouquets for her; diamonds are too dim for her to wear; pearls are tame.

——­And after marriage the weeks are even shorter than before:  you wonder why on earth all the single men in the world do not rush tumultuously to the Altar; you look upon them all as a travelled man will look upon some conceited Dutch boor who has never been beyond the limits of his cabbage-garden.  Married men, on the contrary, you regard as fellow-voyagers; and look upon their wives—­ugly as they may be—­as better than none.

You blush a little at first telling your butcher what “your wife” would like; you bargain with the grocer for sugars and teas, and wonder if he knows that you are a married man.  You practise your new way of talk upon your office-boy:  you tell him that “your wife” expects you home to dinner; and are astonished that he does not stare to hear you say it!

You wonder if the people in the omnibus know that Madge and you are just married; and if the driver knows that the shilling you hand to him is for “self and wife.”  You wonder if anybody was ever so happy before, or ever will be so happy again.

You enter your name upon the hotel books as “Clarence ——­ and Wife”; and come back to look at it, wondering if anybody else has noticed it,—­and thinking that it looks remarkably well.  You cannot help thinking that every third man you meet in the hall wishes he possessed your wife; nor do you think it very sinful in him to wish it.  You fear it is placing temptation in the way of covetous men to put Madge’s little gaiters outside the chamber-door at night.

Your home, when it is entered, is just what it should be,—­quiet, small,—­with everything she wishes, and nothing more than she wishes.  The sun strikes it in the happiest possible way; the piano is the sweetest-toned in the world; the library is stocked to a charm;—­and Madge, that blessed wife, is there, adorning and giving life to it all.  To think even of her possible death is a suffering you class with the infernal tortures of the Inquisition.  You grow twin of heart and of purpose.  Smiles seem made for marriage; and you wonder how you ever wore them before!

* * * * *

So a year and more wears off of mingled home-life, visiting, and travel.  A new hope and joy lightens home:  there is a child there.

——­What a joy to be a father!  What new emotions crowd the eye with tears, and make the hand tremble!  What a benevolence radiates from you toward the nurse,—­toward the physician,—­toward everybody!  What a holiness and sanctity of love grows upon your old devotion to that wife of your bosom—­the mother of your child!

The excess of joy seems almost to blur the stories of happiness which attach to heaven.  You are now joined, as you were never joined before, to the great family of man.  Your name and blood will live after you; nor do you once think (what father can?) but that it will live honorably and well.