little the real range of his mind and the
unswerving trend of his ambitious nature.

"So my, wedding-day came and we were united in the very hotel where I
had so long served in a menial capacity. The social distinctions in such
a place being small and my birth and breeding really placing me on a
par with my employer and his family, I was given the parlor for this
celebration and never, never, shall I forget its mean and bare look,
even to my untutored eyes; or how lonely those far hills looked, through
the small-paned window I faced; or what a shadow seemed to fall across
them as the parson uttered those fateful words, so terrible to one
whose heart is not in them: What God hath joined together let no man put
asunder. Death and not life awaited me on that bleak hillside, or so I
thought, though the bridegroom at my side was the handsomest man I had
ever seen and had rather exceeded than failed in his devotion to me as a
lover.

"The ceremony over, I went up-stairs to make my final preparations for
departure. No bridesmaids or real friends had lent joy to the occasion;
and when I closed that parlor door upon my bridegroom and the two or
three neighbors and boon companions with whom he was making merry, I
found myself alone with my dead heart and a most unwelcome future. I
remember, as the lock clicked and the rude hall, ruder even than the
wretched half-furnished room I had just left, opened before me, a
sensation of terror at leaving even this homely refuge and a half-formed
wish that I was going back to my dish-washing in the kitchen. It was
therefore with a shock, which makes my brain reel yet, that I saw, lying
on a little table which I had to pass, a letter directed to myself,
bearing the postmark, Detroit. What might there not be in it? What?
What?

"Gasping as much with fear as delight, I caught up the letter, and,
rushing with it to my room, locked myself in and tore open the envelope.
A single sheet fell out; it was signed with the name I had heard
whispered in my ear from early childhood, and always in connection with
riches and splendor and pleasures,--it was rapture to dream of. This was
an agitation in itself, but the words--the words! I have never told them
to mortal being, but I must tell them now; I remember them as I remember
the look of my child's face when she was first put in my arms, the
child--"

She had underrated her strength. She broke into a storm of weeping which
shook to the very soul one