I would complain more loudly--in shrieks--if I could say I was unhappy;
but every night I look out of my window before going to bed and see the
long falls of the infant river through the meadow, and the dark woods
seeming to enclose the house from harm: I dream of the old inhabitant,
his ancestors, and the numbers and numbers of springs when the
wildflowers have flourished in those woods and the nightingales have sung
there. And I feel there will never be a home to me like Dayton.




CHAPTER V

HE

For twenty years of my life I have embraced the phantom of the fairest
woman that ever drew breath. I have submitted to her whims, I have
worshipped her feet, I have, I believe, strengthened her principle.
I have done all in my devotion but adopt her religious faith. And I
have, as I trusted some time since, awakened to perceive that those
twenty years were a period of mere sentimental pastime, perfectly
useless, fruitless, unless, as is possible, it has saved me from other
follies. But it was a folly in itself. Can one's nature be too
stedfast? The question whether a spice of frivolousness may not be a
safeguard has often risen before me. The truth, I must learn to think,
is, that my mental power is not the match for my ideal or sentimental
apprehension and native tenacity of attachment. I have fallen into one
of the pits of a well-meaning but idle man. The world discredits the
existence of pure platonism in love. I myself can barely look back on
those twenty years of amatory servility with a full comprehension of the