Two years after this, I sat on an autumn evening in my beloved
parsonage by the fire. Near to me sat my dear little wife, my
sweet, Wilhelmina, and spun. I was just about to read to her a
sermon which I intended to preach on the next Sunday, and from
which I promised myself much edification, as well for her as for
the assembled congregation. Whilst I was turning over the leaves,
a loose paper fell out. It was the paper upon which, on that evening
two years before, in a very different situation, I had written down
my cheerful and my sad thoughts. I showed it to my wife. She read,
smiled with a tear in her eye, and with a roguish countenance which,
as I fancy, is particular to her, took the pen and wrote on the other
side of the paper:
"The author can now, thank God, strike out a description which
would stand in perfect contrast to that which he once, in a dark
hour, sketched of an unfortunate person, as he himself was then.
"Now he is no more lonesome, no more deserted. His quiet sighs are
answered, his secret griefs shared, by a wife tenderly devoted to
him. He goes, her heart follows him; he comes back, she meets him
with smiles; his tears flow not unobserved, they are dried by her
hand, and his smiles beam again in hers; for him she gathers
flowers, to wreathe around his brow, to strew in his path. He has
his own fireside, friends devoted to him, and, counts as his
relations all those who have none of their own.
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