If the reader will refer back to the first part of this narrative, he
will find that I was born in the year 1786; and as I am writing this in
the year 1840, I am now fifty-four years old. I was but little more than
twenty-one when I married; I have, therefore, the experience of
thirty-two years of a married life; but I will not anticipate. I ended
the last chapter with my own happy union; I must now refer to those
events which followed close upon that period.
Sir James and Lady O'Connor had taken up their residence at Leamington,
then a small village, and not the populous place which it has since
become. After a few months' residence, during which I had repeated
letters from Lady O'Connor and Virginia, they were so pleased with the
locality and neighborhood that Sir James purchased a property of some
hundred acres, and added to a house which was upon it, so as to make it
a comfortable and elegant residence. Lady O'Connor, after the first
year, presented her husband with a son, and has since that been very
assiduous in increasing his family--more so, perhaps, than would have
been convenient to Sir James O'Connor's income at the time that he
purchased the property, had it not been that the increase of its value,
in consequence of a large portion of it having been taken as building
land, has been so great as to place them in most affluent circumstances.
About a year after my marriage I had notice from Lady O'Connor that a
certain gentleman had arrived there who had shown great attention to
Virginia; and she added that he had been very well received by my
sister, being an old acquaintance of the name of Sommerville, a
clergyman with a good living, and a very superior young man. I
immediately recollected him as the preceptor who had behaved with such
propriety when my sister was persecuted by the addresses of the young
nobleman; and I, therefore, felt very easy upon the subject. A few
months afterward I had a letter from Virginia, stating that he had
proposed, and that she had conditionally accepted him. I wrote to her,
congratulating her upon the choice she had made, giving her father's
consent and blessing (of my mother hereafter); and shortly after they
were married; and I am happy to say that her marriage has turned out as
fortunate as my own.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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