in mine. I have questioned myself on this matter often and deeply, and my soul has returned one only answer—'I love her truly, passionately love her!' My imagination has often of late conjured up before me my beloved as I first knew her in the spring of womanhood, and I have listened again to her first fond words to me—me, a poor and friendless boy, to whom then none other had ever spoken fondly; and all her faults (for faults I tell her most lovingly she has) were lost in the beauty of her pure and deep affection. And, oh! I feel that, though I was greatly rich and loaded with honour and courted and flattered by the world (which, happily, I never shall be), still there would be one whose smile to me was like the common sunshine, without which I could not live to enjoyment.
And this is my love letter to my dear wife and companion, to whom I am now, for ever and ever, with a heart full of love,
