“Nothing could have been farther removed from coarseness or passion than my love for Mary; I never pressed my lips to hers. So I could be near her, hear her voice, and live in the sunshine of herself, I was content. I went out from her society a better man each time. I would go any distance, endure any exposure, so I might but feel the blessed light of her eyes come into mine. I never joked with her as I might others. I never used her name before any person. I never wrote it carelessly. Everything pertaining to her was sacred as the heaven which I sometime expected to enter. My highest thought was her happiness, not mine. My ambition, my hopes, my prayers, all centred in that one desire to walk beside her in the beautiful journey of life. When any person coupled my name with hers in pleasantry I felt as though they had touched a name that was hallowed, and changed the subject. I longed to be constantly in her presence, yet dared not trouble her too much; so between desire to hover near and fear of being an annoyance rather than a joy my soul was constantly harassed. I had often pledged myself to ask her to accept my homage, and though I had means and social position and education, everything seemed unworthy of her. What if she refused to be my guide forever? Life then would be worse than useless; so, hoping and praying, I waited, and my worship grew as the months went by. Every flower that she loved I pressed and laid away in the books I had seen her read. Every kindly word she gave me made me joyful for days. Every touch of her hand thrilled me with delight, and I lived over the bliss a thousand times in memory. Once, I remember, when I gave her a picture of myself, and she looked at it long and earnestly I thought, and her dark hair touched mine, I was too happy for words to express it. “Other young men called upon her, and, like myself, showed her the deference that belonged to a pure, beautiful woman, girl though she was in years. Among them was a noble young man, the perfection of manly grace and the embodiment of manly virtues. Alfred Trumbull was a preacher, a genial, earnest, eloquent young man, as spiritual as herself. I had met him there and had learned to love him. He admired her, we all plainly saw, but she treated him as the rest, with a cordiality that was blended with reserve and that kept us all removed just far enough to worship her. “Weeks went by. I was growing wretched. I was coming to know how entirely dependent I was upon her for happiness. If a day passed by and I did not see her, it was a lost day. I must tell her and have her all my own. Oh, Marsh, those were glad days, after all,—when I could see her, if no more,—but God and time shape things differently from what we will!