grateful tenderness that no words of mine can express. The memory
of my wife is busy at my heart while I think of those past times.
The forgotten tears rise in my eyes again, and trouble the course
of my pen while it traces these simple lines.

Let me pass rapidly over the one unspeakable misery of my life;
let me try to remember now, as I tried to remember then, that she
lived to see our only child--our son, who was so good to her, who
is still so good to me--grow up to manhood; that her head lay on
my bosom when she died; and that the last frail movement of her
hand in this world was the movement that brought it closer to her
boy's lips.

I bore the blow--with God's help I bore it, and bear it still.
But it struck me away forever from my hold on social life; from
the purposes and pursuits, the companions and the pleasures of
twenty years, which her presence had sanctioned and made dear to
me. If my son George had desired to follow my profession, I
should still have struggled against myself, and have kept my
place in the world until I had seen h im prosperous and settled.
But his choice led him to the army; and before his mother's death
he had obtained his commission, and had entered on his path in
life. No other responsibility remained to claim from me the
sacrifice of myself; my brothers had made my place ready for me
by their fireside; my heart yearned, in its desolation, for the
friends and companions of the old boyish days; my good, brave son
promised that no year should pass, as long as he was in England,
without his coming to cheer me; and so it happened that I, in my
turn, withdrew from the world, which had once been a bright and a
happy world to me, and retired to end my days, peacefully,