so little trouble to you, and so serviceable to you in many ways, that you
shall realize to the full that if an unloving union could be so much more
comfortable than a bachelor's life, a life passed with a loving and
beloved wife would be bliss indeed, and so when my life has ended you will
not be sorry that I stopped in your path a few years. For I shall not
trouble you very long. I am a poor little perfumeless flower, having no
sweetness or beauty with which to charm the eye or senses, only fit to
grow among the kitchen herbs--rue and thyme, and such old-fashioned
things. But I need a great deal of sunshine, spite of my plainness, to
keep life in me. And now that all the heat and passion of love, all the
sunny hopes and glow of friendship, have left me, I shall just fade and
fade until some day you will find the poor little weed has dropped to
earth for ever.

I am but two years younger than yourself, and women, especially women with
a great sorrow, age cruelly fast. I look and feel older than I am--you
wear your years like a crown, and appear younger than you are. I have made
my little venture on life's ocean--made and failed: my barque, freighted
with a few cherished hopes, has been wrecked, and though I have reached a
rock to which I can cling for a time, yet I am terribly hurt, the waves
have buffeted me cruelly, and in a little while I shall let go my hold and
float out--out into the ocean of eternity. Ah! there is comfort after all:
life _is_ hard, but afterward there is peace and rest!

I am nearly through this long tirade. Pardon its length: it is my first,
and shall be my last, heart-outpouring to you; and if it make you
comprehend me, I shall not have written or you have read in vain.

Your income will not support the establishment your position in society
would require if we went to housekeeping; besides, you would feel as if