“These sentiments, which my fingers trace, and in expressing which I feel such inconceivable pleasure that I cannot repeat them too often, proceed from the bottom of my heart, from that incurable wound you have made in it; a wound which I bless a thousand times, notwithstanding the cruel sufferings I endure in your absence.
“Do not imagine that my words convey more than I feel. Alas! whatever expressions I may use, I shall still think much more than I can ever say. My eyes, which never cease looking for you, and incessantly weep till they shall behold you again; my afflicted heart, which seeks but you; my sighs, which escape my lips whenever I think on you, and that is continually; my imagination which never reflects any object but my beloved prince tweenie-maid; the complaints I offer to heaven of the rigour of my fate; in short, my melancholy, my uneasiness, my sufferings, from which I have had no respite since I lost sight of you, are all-sufficient pledges of the truth of what I write. I pray that we may be granted an opportunity of telling each other, without restraint, the tender affection we feel, and that we will never cease to love. Farewell.
“I salute Lady Vaughan, to whom we each have so many obligations.”
Not to make too long a story of this. The course of true love ran smoothly enough. The adored tweenie took it all very calmly, very much as a matter of course, and in due time they were married.
No one supposed that they could be happy together, so opposite were they to each other. Yet never did the parish see a more affectionate and devoted couple. Aaron “yarned” to his Bessie, telling her his marvellous tales. She knitted or darned listening with a stolid face, and when he had done said, “Aaron, get along with your nonsense, I don’t believe in any of your marvels.”
He took her unbelief in good part. If she did not relish his tales, it was her misfortune and not her fault. He was soul, she was body, and each has its proper place in the economy of nature. He was everything that was imaginative, she was wholly commonplace, and the mixture in one household produced not ferment, but peace.
“I wish,” said Aaron, “I wish, Lizzie, I could see wonders. I read of them, I think of them, I tell of them, and yet I have never seen one.”
Suddenly, to the amazement of every one, Aaron died. He caught a chill that settled on his lungs, and he was dead in three days. His wife attended to him with devotion and unflagging solicitude. One night he turned his bright feverish eyes on her and said—
“Liz! kiss me. I’m going at last to see wonders, and you won’t say to me there, where I am going: ‘Get along with your nonsense.’”
He did not say another word, but passed in this eager, expectant attitude of soul into the World of Wonders.