"And if, sometimes, as she sat by his side on the piazza, her fancy
looked through her eyes upon that summer sea, and saw a younger lover,
perhaps some one of those graceful and glowing heroes who occupy the
foreground of all young maidens' visions by the sea, yet she could not
find one more generous and gracious, nor fancy one more worthy and
loving than my grandfather Titbottom.

"And if, in the moonlit midnight, while he lay calmly sleeping, she
leaned out of the window, and sank into vague reveries of sweet
possibility, and watched the gleaming path of the moonlight upon the
water, until the dawn glided over it--it was only that mood of
nameless regret and longing, which underlies all human happiness; or
it was the vision of that life of cities and the world, which she had
never seen, but of which she had often read, and which looked very
fair and alluring across the sea, to a girlish imagination, which knew
that it should never see that reality.

"These West Indian years were the great days of the family," said
Titbottom, with an air of majestic and regal regret, pausing, and
musing, in our little parlor, like a late Stuart in exile, remembering
England.

Prue raised her eyes from her work, and looked at him with subdued
admiration; for I have observed that, like the rest of her sex, she
has a singular sympathy with the representative of a reduced family.

Perhaps it is their finer perception, which leads these tender-hearted
women to recognize the divine right of social superiority so much more
readily than we; and yet, much as Titbottom was enhanced in my wife's