tears in her eyes:

"Promise me--promise me, Adam, until we are married, and--yes, _after_
we are married--as long as I live, that you will never believe anything
of me until you _know_ that it is true!"

"I do promise, dear, dear, dearest one-!" I cried, trying to draw her
to me, but she would not permit it. "And you?"

"I shall never misunderstand," she replied, as with a flash of white
inward light. "I know that you can never do anything that will make me
think the less of you."


Since the sad, sad day on which I caused the death of the Cardinal, I
have paid little heed to the birds. The subject has been a sore one.
Besides, my whole life is gradually changing under the influence of
Georgiana, who draws me farther and farther away from nature, and
nearer and nearer to my own kind.

When, two years ago, she moved into this part of the State, I dwelt on
the outskirts of the town and of humanity. On the side of them lay the
sour land of my prose; the country, nature, rolled away on the other as
the sweet deep ocean of my poetry. I called my neighbors my
manifestations of prose; my doings with the townspeople, prose
passages. The manifestations and passages scarce made a scrimp volume.
There was Jacob, who lived on his symptoms and died without any; there
was and there is Mrs. Walters--may she last to the age of the eagle.
In town, a couple of prose items of cheap quality: an old preacher who
was willing to save my soul while my strawberries were ripe, and an old