My heart overflowed with thankfulness to Providence: I had a natural
tone of unaffected piety; and thus far, at least, I might have been
called a religious man, that in the simplicity of truth I could have
exclaimed,

'O, Abner, I fear God, and I fear none beside.'

But wherefore seek to delay ascending by a natural climax to that final
consummation and perfect crown of my felicity--that almighty blessing
which ratified their value to all the rest? Wherefore, oh! wherefore do
I shrink in miserable weakness from--what? Is it from reviving, from
calling up again into fierce and insufferable light the images and
features of a long-buried happiness? That would be a natural shrinking
and a reasonable weakness. But how escape from reviving, whether I give
it utterance or not, that which is for ever vividly before me? What
need to call into artificial light that which, whether sleeping or
waking, by night or by day, for eight-and-thirty years has seemed by
its miserable splendor to scorch my brain? Wherefore shrink from giving
language, simple vocal utterance, to that burden of anguish which by so
long an endurance has lost no atom of its weight, nor can gain any most
surely by the loudest publication? Need there can be none, after this,
to say that the priceless blessing, which I have left to the final
place in this ascending review, was the companion of my life--my
darling and youthful wife. Oh! dovelike woman! fated in an hour the
most defenceless to meet with the ravening vulture,--lamb fallen
amongst wolves,--trembling--fluttering fawn, whose path was inevitably
to be crossed by the bloody tiger;--angel, whose most innocent heart
fitted thee for too early a flight from this impure planet; if indeed
it were a necessity that thou shouldst find no rest for thy footing
except amidst thy native heavens, if indeed to leave what was not