ONE CHAPTER FROM HESTER HALLAM'S LIFE.
"Ah! Hester, Hester, keep back your tears. Be the brave little wife and woman now. Have faith, hope, and courage; the year will soon speed by, and, lo! here shall I find you again! God grant it! And good-by, my wife, my children—my all and only treasures."
They are engraven on my memory—these last words of Henry Hallam, my husband, my beloved. They were spoken hopefully, cheerfully, though I knew they were intended to cover the sorrow of a heart that ached, even as did mine, at our final parting.
Henry Hallam was to go to South America as chief engineer of a proposed road from some inland city to the Pacific. After a marriage of eight years, this was our first separation. I never did consent to it. Better poverty and the humblest life together than that mountains and seas should divide us, I argued.
But Henry was proud, as he was tender and loving; he could not bear to see his wife, delicately reared, doing menial service; nor his little girls deprived of waxen dolls, because they would usurp the ragged dollar that must go for bread.
Our situation had fallen from bad to worse; an expensive lawsuit had been decided against us, to liquidate the cost of which an out-West piece of land, that was to have been our children's fortune, had to be sold at a sacrifice; and when all was paid, except our scanty furniture, we had but three hundred dollars in the world. We lived in a rented house in the beautiful suburbs of Brooklyn; three months' rent would consume our all. Meantime, upon what should we live, and wherewithal should we be clothed? This was a serious question, which vexed my husband for many days. He suddenly answered it by accepting with alacrity this lucrative position in South America. My only living relative in all America was one sister, widowed and childless. She came from the West to abide with me during my husband's absence. She, too, had comparative poverty for her dowry, her only income arising from the interest of less than a thousand dollars.
No thought of poverty haunted us, however; heretofore all our wants had been supplied, and we had lived almost luxuriously, counting upon the fortune which had been for six years dwindling to less and less in courts of law.
It was with no dread of poverty, I repeat, that I saw my husband take his departure. I thought only how the light had gone from our house, and joy from existence. I am distressed whenever I read of the ever-recurring matrimonial quarrels and divorces which appear now the order of the day. I could have lived with Henry Hallam through the countless eternal years, and—God forgive me!—desired no other heaven.