I was the first stricken, upon returning from a visit in the East to our cottage at Cresson Springs on top of the Alleghanies where my mother and I spent our happy summers.  I had been quite unwell for a day or two before leaving New York.  A physician being summoned, my trouble was pronounced typhoid fever.  Professor Dennis was called from New York and he corroborated the diagnosis.  An attendant physician and trained nurse were provided at once.  Soon after my mother broke down and my brother in Pittsburgh also was reported ill.

I was despaired of, I was so low, and then my whole nature seemed to change.  I became reconciled, indulged in pleasing meditations, was without the slightest pain.  My mother’s and brother’s serious condition had not been revealed to me, and when I was informed that both had left me forever it seemed only natural that I should follow them.  We had never been separated; why should we be now?  But it was decreed otherwise.

I recovered slowly and the future began to occupy my thoughts.  There was only one ray of hope and comfort in it.  Toward that my thoughts always turned.  For several years I had known Miss Louise Whitfield.  Her mother permitted her to ride with me in the Central Park.  We were both very fond of riding.  Other young ladies were on my list.  I had fine horses and often rode in the Park and around New York with one or the other of the circle.  In the end the others all faded into ordinary beings.  Miss Whitfield remained alone as the perfect one beyond any I had met.  Finally I began to find and admit to myself that she stood the supreme test I had applied to several fair ones in my time.  She alone did so of all I had ever known.  I could recommend young men to apply this test before offering themselves.  If they can honestly believe the following lines, as I did, then all is well: 

    “Full many a lady
    I’ve eyed with best regard:  for several virtues
    Have I liked several women, never any
    With so full soul, but some defect in her
    Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed,
    And put it to the foil; but you, O you,
    So perfect and so peerless are created
    Of every creature’s best."[38]

[Footnote 38:  Ferdinand to Miranda in The Tempest.]

In my soul I could echo those very words.  To-day, after twenty years of life with her, if I could find stronger words I could truthfully use them.

My advances met with indifferent success.  She was not without other and younger admirers.  My wealth and future plans were against me.  I was rich and had everything and she felt she could be of little use or benefit to me.  Her ideal was to be the real helpmeet of a young, struggling man to whom she could and would be indispensable, as her mother had been to her father.  The care of her own family had largely fallen upon her after her father’s death when she was twenty-one.  She was now twenty-eight; her views of life were formed.  At times she seemed more favorable and we corresponded.  Once, however, she returned my letters saying she felt she must put aside all thought of accepting me.