In the first week of June, while the young summer sunshine was bright
and pleasant, Arthur and I were married, Zita was my pretty bridesmaid
and Louis our gallant groomsman; our only guests were the Rutherbys
and Mr. Dalton.

Cousin Bessie gave us a cosy wedding breakfast, and it was amid
riotous merry-making and boisterous good wishes for a long and happy
future we drove away from the little gate, where some months before
that we had begun the chapter whose joyful sequel was now in progress.

The rest is an old story, familiar to many homes and hearts, the story
of that wedded happiness which is the outgrowth of two steady,
abiding, enduring loves. I have been happier as Arthur Campbell's wife
than I could ever have been as Ernest Dalton's, and I shall state why:

When we are young, we develop a tendency to exalt and idealize the
common-place phases of life beyond all limits of reason or
possibility. We flatter our buoyant expectations with the conviction
that there is honey in the heart of every trifling flower we must
gather by life's dusty roadside, and that it needs but the magic touch
of our own hand to have it brought to the surface. This is a pleasant
delusion, which, however, is susceptible of being rudely and roughly
dispelled by an impartial experience as we grow older, when this
exaggerated tendency creeps into our loves, and it is there it holds
the fullest sway, and does the maddest mischief, the danger of a
disenchanting awakening is still greater and more hazardous. For when
we love in an abstract sense we exclusively, love in utter oblivion of
the exactions of real life; we never stop to consider that that love
which purposes to endure and strengthen with time must be coupled with
a broad, impartial view of the stubborn circumstances, which are the