“At last the day arrived when Lannie’s reckoning proved correct; my father and Mr. Penway came to visit me at school; they quickly told me what the plans were, and for me to go on with a repetition of the details would only bore you. Mr. Penway made love to me in a manner that I then supposed was perfectly correct, but I have since been led to believe that his manner courtship was stereotyped, but it made no difference. I was the price of a home and a fortune, I saw it all; if I refused, my father’s years of labor would be lost, and he would be penniless and my mother homeless. I felt as though children were brought into the world much the same as horses, cattle and hogs, that a fixed sum might be realized on them. “We were married in a hotel in St. Louis. All of the luxuries were supplied, gowns of rarest and most exquisite texture, and as I rudely told one of my bridesmaids, every article was there which is needed at a first class funeral except the casket and hearse. “Music, ushers with stately tread, presents and flowers, great clusters of potted plants, waving ferns, roses, pure white lilies, narcissus, orange blossoms, loads of each, in full view; yes, and wrapped in a bit of white silk, nestled inside my clothing next to my heart, were a handful of withered wild flowers, which during four years had kept fresh in my memory. “We went to Europe, spent the winter in sunny Italy. At times I did imagine I was happy, then the ghost of something, I knew not what, arose before me and all I could see was a contract, wherein so many dollars in hand paid, had been exchanged for a human form, which was so like ice that the purchaser could only gaze on his possession with a feeling that he, at least, got it first hand, without it ever having been placed on the bargain counter. I had no conception of what married life was, and I fear my husband was a poor teacher. Many fine pictures and rare ornaments found their way into the great pile of treasures and relics which we gathered with no thought of cost. Mr. Penway was a connoisseur, but not a lover. He was proud of me. I was introduced to many of the noble families; I was catered to by those whose station in life was apparently so far above me that I shuddered when I thought of a saw mill. We returned from our trip abroad, only to be ushered into a house of magnificence; that is, so far as grandeur was concerned. Servants to do my bidding, carriages at my command; all, everything that money could buy, but not one bit of love; not a word of that soul sustaining love.