Surely, I then was happy! I can not deceive myself as to the
character of those brief Eden moments of security and peace. Even
now, lone as I appear in the sight of others--degraded as I feel
myself--even now I look back on our low white cottage, by the
shores of that placid lake--its little palings gleaming sweetly
through its dense green foliage--recall those happy, halcyon days,
and feel that we both, for the time, had attained the secret--the
secret worth all the rest--of an enjoyment actually felt, and
quite as full, flush, and satisfactory, as it had seemed in the
perspective. Possession had taken nothing of the gusto from hope.
Truth had not impaired a single beauty of the ideal. I looked in
Julia's face at morning when I awakened, and her loveliness did
not fade. My lips, that drank sweetness from hers, did not cease
to believe the sweetness to be there--as pure, as warm, as full
of richness, as when I had only dreamed of their perfections. Our
days and nights were pure, and gentle, and fond. One twenty-four
hours shall speak for all.
When we rose at morning, we prepared for a ramble, either into the
woods, or along the banks of the lovely river that lay west of, and
at a short distance only from, our dwelling. There, wandering, as
the sun rose, we imparted to each other's eyes the several objects
of beauty which his rising glance betrayed. Sometimes we sat
beneath a tree, while she hurriedly sketched a clump of woods, the
winding turn of the shore, its occasional crescent form or abrupt
headland, as they severally appeared in a new light, and at a happy
moment of time, beneath our vision. The songs of pleasant birds
allured us on; the sweet scent of pines and myrtle refreshed us;
and a gay, wholesome, hearty spirit was awakened in our mutual
bosoms, as thus, day after day, while, like the d&y, our hearts
were in their first youth, we resorted to the ever-fresh mansions
of the sovereign Nature. This habit produces purity of feeling,
and continues the habit in its earliest simplicity. The childlike
laws which it encourages and strengthens are those which virtue
most loves, and which strained forms of society are the first to
overthrow. The pure tastes of youth are those which are always
most dear to humanity; and love is easy of access, and peace not
often a stranger to the mind, where these tastes preserve their
ascendency.
My profession was something at variance with these tastes and
feelings. The very idea of law, which presupposes the frequent
occurrence of injustice, engenders, by its practice, a habit of
suspicion. To throw doubt upon the fact, and defeat and prevent
convictions of the probable, are habits which lawyers soon acquire.
This is natural from the daily encounter with bad and striving
men--men who employ the law as an instrument by which to evade
right, or inflict wrong; and, this apart, the acute mind loves,
for its own sake, the very exercise of doubt, by which ingenuity
is put in practice, and an adroit discrimination kept constantly
at work.