I just
beheld the fair object, and I was a dead man, or a new man, or anything
you will. Frequently as I have looked and acted like a fool, I believe I
never did so so strikingly as at that moment. She was a beautiful
girl--a very angel of light--about five feet three inches high, and my
own age. Heaven knows how I ever had courage to declare my passion; for
I put it off day after day, and week after week, always preparing a new
speech against the next time of meeting her, until three or four rivals
stepped forward before me. At length I did speak, and never was love
more clumsily declared. I told her in three words; then looked to the
ground, and again in her face most pitifully. She received my addresses
just as saucily as a pretty girl could do. But it were useless to go
over our courtship; it was the only happy period of my existence, and
every succeeding day has been misery. Matters were eventually brought to
a bearing, and the fatal day of final felicity appointed. I was yet
young, and my love possessed all the madness of a first passion. She not
only occupied my heart, but my whole thoughts; I could think of nothing
else, speak of nothing else, and, what was worse, do nothing else: it
burned up the very capabilities of action, and rendered my native
indolence yet more indolent. However, the day came (and a bitter stormy
day it was), the ceremony was concluded, and the honeymoon seemed to
pass away in a fortnight.

"About twelve months after our marriage, Heaven (as authors say) blest
our loves with a son and, I had almost said, heir. Deplorable
patrimony!--heir of his mother's features--the sacrifice of his father's
weakness." Kean could not have touched this last burst. The father, the
miserable man, parental affection, agony, remorse, repentance, were
expressed in a moment.

A tear was hurrying down his withered cheek as he dashed it away with
his dripping sleeve. "I am a weak old fool," said he, endeavouring to
smile; for there was a volatile gaiety in his disposition, which his
sorrows had subdued, but not extinguished. "Yet, my boy! my poor dear
Willie!--I shall never--no, I shall never see him again!" Here he again
wept; and had nature not denied me that luxury, I should have wept too,
for the sake of company. After a pause, he again proceeded:--

"After the birth of my child, came the baptism. I had no conscientious
objection to the tenets of the Established Church of my country; but I
belonged to no r