side of the moonlit track all the other waves, running equally to
their grave in the invisible deep, seem motionless and dark. I can
write no more.

. . . . . . . . .

(Dated two days later.)

They say she is beneath us in wealth and station. Are we, my
father--we, two well-born gentlemen--coveters of gold or lackeys of
the great? When I was at college, if there were any there more
heartily despised than another it was the parasite and the
tuft-hunter; the man who chose his friends according as their money or
their rank might be of use to him. If so mean where the choice is so
little important to the happiness and career of a man who has
something of manhood in him, how much more mean to be the parasite and
tuft-hunter in deciding what woman to love, what woman to select as
the sweetener and ennobler of one's everyday life! Could she be to my
life that sweetener, that ennobler? I firmly believe it. Already
life itself has gained a charm that I never even guessed in it before;
already I begin, though as yet but faintly and vaguely, to recognize
that interest in the objects and aspirations of my fellow-men which is
strongest in those whom posterity ranks among its ennoblers. In this
quiet village it is true that I might find examples enough to prove
that man is not meant to meditate upon life, but to take active part
in it, and in that action to find his uses. But I doubt if I should
have profited by such examples; if I should not have looked on this
small stage of the world as I have looked on the large one, with the
indifferent eyes of a spectator on a trite familiar play carried on by
ordinary actors, had not my whole being suddenly leaped out of