Carlyle never forgot her birthday afterwards. Once she thought that he had, and she told the story of her mistake and its correction thus: "Oh! my dear husband, fortune has played me such a cruel trick this day! and I do not even feel any resentment against fortune for the suffocating misery of the last two hours. I know always, when I seem to you most exacting, that whatever happens to me is nothing like so bad as I deserve. But you shall hear how it was. Not a line from you on my birthday, the postmistress averred! I did not burst out crying, I did not faint--did not do anything absurd, so far as I know; but I walked back again, without speaking a word; and with such a tumult of wretchedness in my heart as you, who know me, can conceive. And then I shut myself in my own room to fancy everything that was most tormenting. Were you, finally, so out of patience with me that you had resolved to write to me no more at all? Had you gone to Addiscombe, and found no leisure there to remember my existence? Were you taken ill, so ill that you could not write? That last idea made me mad to get off to the railway, and back to London. Oh, mercy! what a two hours I had of it! And just when I was at my wits' end, I heard Julia crying out through the house: 'Mrs. Carlyle, Mrs. Carlyle! Are you there? Here is a letter for you.' And so there was after all! The postmistress had overlooked it, and had given it to Robert, when he went afterwards, not knowing that we had been. I wonder what love-letter was ever received with such thankfulness! Oh, my dear! I am not fit for living in the world with this organization. I am as much broken to pieces by that little accident as if I had come through an attack of cholera or typhus fever. I cannot even steady my hand to write decently. But I felt an irresistible need of thanking you, by return of post. Yes, I have kissed the dear little card-case; and now I will lie down awhile, and try to get some sleep. At least, to quiet myself, I will try to believe--oh, why cannot I believe it once for all--that, with all my faults and follies, I am 'dearer to you than any earthly creature.'" Hundreds of other cases of love surviving matrimony might be cited but we shall only add one more. On the fifty-fourth anniversary of his marriage, Mr. S. C. Hall composed the following lines, a copy of which I had the pleasure of receiving from himself: "Yes! we go gently down the hill of life, And thank our God at every step we go; The husband-lover and the sweetheart-wife. Of creeping age what do we care or know? Each says to each, 'Our fourscore years, thrice told, Would leave us young:' the soul is never old! What is the grave to us? can it divide The destiny of two by God made one? We step across, and reach the other side, To know our blended life is but begun. These fading faculties are sent to say Heaven is more near to-day than yesterday." CHAPTER XXVIII.