of the finest manners and of perfect breeding.

And Georgiana--how she shone! I knew that she could perfectly fill a
window; I now see that she can as easily fill a room. Our bodies were
grouped about the fireplace; our minds centred around her, and she
flashed like the evening star along our intellectual pathway.

The next day Mrs. Walters talked a long time to Georgiana on the edge
of the porch.


Thus my wife and I have begun life together. I think that most of our
evenings will be spent in the room dedicated to a kind word for life
universal. No matter how closely the warring forces of existence,
within or without, have pressed upon us elsewhere, when we enter there
we enter peace. We shall be walled in, from all darkness of whatsoever
meaning; our better selves will be the sole guests of those luminous
hours. And surely no greater good-fortune can befall any household
than to escape an ignoble evening. To attain a noble one is like lying
calmly down to sleep on a mountain-top towards which our feet have
struggled upward amid enemies all day long.

Although we have now been two months married, I have not yet captured
the old uncapturable loveliness of nature which has always led me and
still leads me on in the person of Georgiana, I know but too well now
that I never shall. The charm in her which I pursue, yet never
overtake, is part and parcel of that ungraspable beauty of the world
which forever foils the sense while it sways the spirit--of that
elusive, infinite splendor of God which flows from afar into all
terrestrial things, filling them as color fills the rose. Even while I