“Why, from among the millions of men upon this planet, why should I have been the one chosen to enjoy this unique rapture? What have I done to deserve that the single peerless and perfect lady should be mine? It is incomprehensible. In a world built up of marvels, it is the prime, the crowning, the over-topping marvel. It would be incredible, were it not indubitably true. But sometimes, true though I know it to be, I become so acutely conscious of the wonder and incomprehensibility of it, that I doubt it in spite of myself. Then I think: may be, after all, it is a dream. At such moments, I hasten to see you, to verify it. I can not reach you quickly enough. At what a snail's pace the horse-car drags along! How endless are the intervals when it stops, to take in or to let off a passenger! I count the seconds, I count the inches. All the while, my soul is trembling within me; nor does it cease to tremble, till I have crossed your threshold, and beheld you with my eyes, and touched you with my hands, and thus, so far as seeing and feeling are believing, convinced myself that you really exist, and that my great happiness is not a phantasm--unless indeed, my whole life is one long phantasm, one continuous dream, which sometimes I think may be the explanation of it. This great, vast happiness! It would be ungrateful and irreverent to suppose that it has fallen to my lot by mere chance or accident; and yet I can not understand why God should have so favored me above all other living men; why He should have selected me to receive the greatest blessing that He had to bestow--your love, my queen!”