“It was in this wise that on his death-bed my father had spoken to me. I remembered his words when I found that I had begun to love a woman. It was for this reason that I hesitated to ask your mother to become my wife. “Ah, but, my son, of what avail is hesitation at such a moment?—when you are gazing into the eyes of the woman you love? With sails set and a strong wind behind it, can the ship hesitate to speed across the sea? Thrust into a bed of live coals, can the wood hesitate to kindle and burn? With the sun beating hot upon the earth above it, can the seed hesitate to sprout and send forth rootlets? How long then could I, with the light of your mother’s face shining upon my pathway, how long could I hesitate to say, ‘I love you. Be my wife’.—We were married. “You, my son, will never know how happy it is possible for a man to be. A woman such as your mother is born only once in all time. You will never meet with her like. You will never know the supreme joy of having her for your wife. Her breath was sweeter than the fragrance of the sweetest flower. The song of the nightingale was less musical than her simplest word. All the light of heaven was eclipsed by the light that glowed far down in her eyes. Her presence at my side was a foretaste of paradise. Only to take her hand into my own and stroke its warm, satiny skin, was an ecstasy which I can not describe, which I can not remember even at this extreme moment without a quickening of the pulse. For three, yes, for four years after our marriage we were so happy that we cried each morning and each evening at our prayers, ‘Lord, what have we done to merit such happiness?’—I, my son, laughed as I recalled the dying words of my father. ‘The family curse in my case,’ I said, ‘has gone astray. I have no fear.’—Alas! I took too much for granted. I congratulated myself too soon. Our happiness was doomed to be burst like a bubble at a touch. The family curse had perhaps gone astray for a little while: it was bound to find its way back before the end. The will of our ancestor could not be thwarted. “The first three years of our married life we passed at Savannah, dwelling with the parents of your mother. There you were born—as it seemed, in order to consummate and seal with the seal of our perfect joy. Then, when you were still but three months old, it became necessary that I should return and take up my residence again in New York. We were not sorry to come to New York.