The day for your marriage comes; and you live as if you were in a dream. You think well, and hope well, for all the world. A flood of charity seems to radiate from all around you. And as you sit beside her in the twilight, on the evening before the day when you will call her yours, and talk of the coming hopes, and of the soft shadows of the past, and whisper of Bella’s love, and of that sweet sister’s death, and of Laurence, a new brother, coming home joyful with his bride—and lay your cheek to hers—life seems as if it were all day, and as if there could be no night! The marriage passes; and she is yours—yours forever. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] NEW TRAVEL AGAIN I am upon the sea; but not alone. She whom I first met upon the wastes of ocean is there beside me. Again I steady her tottering step upon the deck; once it was a drifting, careless pleasure; now the pleasure is holy. Once the fear I felt, as the storms gathered, and night came, and the ship tossed madly, and great waves gathering swift and high, came down like slipping mountains, and spent their force upon the quivering vessel, was a selfish fear. But it is so no longer. Indeed, I hardly know fear; for how can the tempests harm _her_? Is she not too good to suffer any of the wrath of heaven? And in nights of calm—holy nights, we lean over the ship’s side, looking down, as once before, into the dark depths, and murmur again snatches of ocean song, and talk of those we love; and we peer among the stars, which seem neighborly, and as if they were the homes of friends. And as the great ocean swells come rocking under us, and carry us up and down along the valleys and the hills of water, they seem like deep pulsations of the great heart of nature, heaving us forward toward the goal of life, and to the gates of heaven. We watch the ships as they come upon the horizon, and sweep toward us, like false friends, with the sun glittering on their sails; and then shift their course, and bear away—with their bright sails, turned to spots of shadow. We watch the long-winged birds skimming the waves hour after hour—like pleasant thoughts—now dashing before our bows, and then sweeping behind, until they are lost in the hollows of the water.