without consent. You see the grand result! Neither man would give
consent, and so that astonishing and most noble echo had to cease from
its great powers; and since that day that magnificent property is tied up
and unsalable.

A week before my wedding-day, while I was still swimming in bliss and the
nobility were gathering from far and near to honor our espousals, came
news of my uncle's death, and also a copy of his will, making me his sole
heir. He was gone; alas, my dear benefactor was no more. The thought
surcharges my heart even at this remote day. I handed the will to the
earl; I could not read it for the blinding tears. The earl read it; then
he sternly said, "Sir, do you call this wealth?--but doubtless you do in
your inflated country. Sir, you are left sole heir to a vast collection
of echoes--if a thing can be called a collection that is scattered far
and wide over the huge length and breadth of the American continent; sir,
this is not all; you are head and ears in debt; there is not an echo in
the lot but has a mortgage on it; sir, I am not a hard man, but I must
look to my child's interest; if you had but one echo which you could
honestly call your own, if you had but one echo which was free from
incumbrance, so that you could retire to it with my child, and by humble,
painstaking industry cultivate and improve it, and thus wrest from it a
maintenance, I would not say you nay; but I cannot marry my child to a
beggar. Leave his side, my darling; go, sir, take your mortgage-ridden
echoes and quit my sight forever."

My noble Celestine clung to me in tears, with loving arms, and swore she
would willingly, nay gladly, marry me, though I had not an echo in the
world. But it could not be. We were torn asunder, she to pine and die
within the twelvemonth, I to toil life's long journey sad and alone,
praying daily, hourly, for that release which shall join us together