youth, with a certain superb contempt,--as a malady engendered by an
effeminate idleness, and fostered by a sickly imagination.

I wished to find in a wife a rational companion, an affectionate and
trustworthy friend. No views of matrimony could be less romantic, more
soberly sensible, than those which I conceived. Nor were my requirements
mercenary or presumptuous. I cared not for fortune; I asked nothing from
connections. My ambition was exclusively professional; it could be
served by no titled kindred, accelerated by no wealthy dower. I was no
slave to beauty. I did not seek in a wife the accomplishments of a
finishing-school teacher.

Having decided that the time had come to select my helpmate, I imagined
that I should find no difficulty in a choice that my reason would approve.
But day upon day, week upon week, passed away, and though among the
families I visited there were many young ladies who possessed more than
the qualifications with which I conceived that I should be amply
contented, and by whom I might flatter myself that my proposals would not
be disdained, I saw not one to whose lifelong companionship I should not
infinitely have preferred the solitude I found so irksome.

One evening, in returning home from visiting a poor female patient
whom I attended gratuitously, and whose case demanded more thought than
that of any other in my list,--for though it had been considered hopeless
in the hospital, and she had come home to die, I felt certain that I
could save her, and she seemed recovering under my care,--one evening--it
was the fifteenth of May--I found myself just before the gates of the
house that had been inhabited by Dr. Lloyd. Since his death the house
had been unoccupied; the rent asked for it by the proprietor was
considered high; and from the sacred Hill on which it was situated,