office of doorkeeper to the house, or of tax-collector to the district.
The taste for domestic life, which at one period might have been held
with him exclusive, had been entirely swallowed up and forgotten in his
public relations; and entirely overlooking the fact, that, in the silent
goings-on of time, the infantile will cease to be so, he never seemed to
observe that the children whom he had brought together but a few years
before might not with reason be considered children any longer.

Children, indeed! What years had they not lived--what volumes of
experience in human affections and feelings had the influence and genial
warmth of a Carolina sun not unfolded to their spirits--in the few sweet
and uninterrupted seasons of their intercourse. How imperious were the
dictates of that nature, to whose immethodical but honest teachings they
had been almost entirely given up. They lived together, walked together,
rode together--read in the same books, conned the same lessons, studied
the same prospects, saw life through the common medium of mutual
associations; and lived happy only in the sweet unison of emotions
gathered at a common fountain, and equally dear, and equally necessary
to them both. And this is love--they loved!

They loved, but the discovery was yet to be made by them. Living in its
purest luxuries--in the perpetual communion of the only one necessary
object--having no desire and as little prospect of change--ignorant of
and altogether untutored by the vicissitudes of life--enjoying the sweet
association which had been the parent of that passion, dependent now
entirely upon its continuance--they had been content, and had never
given themselves any concern to analyze its origin, or to find for it a
name. A momentary doubt--the presages of a dim perspective--would have
taught them better. Had there been a single moment of discontent in
their lives at this period, they had not remained so long in such