nmindful of all I already owe to you, and may never repay?
I can only answer, "It is fate, it is nature, it is love"--

*****

Here I must break off. It is midnight, the moon halts opposite to the
window at which I sit, and on the stream that runs below there is a long
narrow track on which every wave trembles in her light; on either side
of the moonlit track all the other waves, running equally to their grave
in the invisible deep, seem motionless and dark. I can write no more.

.........

(Dated two days later.)

They say she is beneath us in wealth and station. Are we, my father--we,
two well-born gentlemen--coveters of gold or lackeys of the great? When
I was at college, if there were any there more heartily despised than
another it was the parasite and the tuft-hunter; the man who chose his
friends according as their money or their rank might be of use to him.
If so mean where the choice is so little important to the happiness and
career of a man who has something of manhood in him, how much more mean
to be the parasite and tuft-hunter in deciding what woman to love, what
woman to select as the sweetener and ennobler of one's everyday life!
Could she be to my life that sweetener, that ennobler? I firmly believe
it. Already life itself has gained a charm that I never even guessed in
it before; already I begin, though as yet but faintly and vaguely, to
recognize that interest in the objects and aspirations of my fellow-men
which is strongest in those whom posterity ranks among its ennoblers. In
this quiet village it is true that I might find examples enough to prove
that man is not meant to meditate upon life, but to take active part in
it, and in that action to find his uses. But I doubt if I should have
profited by such examples; if I should not have looked on this
small stage of the world as I have looked on the large one, with the
indifferent eyes of a spectator on a trite familiar play carried on
by ordinary actors, had not my whole being suddenly leaped out of
philosophy into passion, and, at once made warmly human, sympathized
with humanity wherever it burned and glowed. Ah, is there to be
any doubt of what station, as mortal bride, is due to her,--her, my
princess, my fairy? If so, how contented you shall be, my father, with
the worldly career of your son! how perseveringly he will strive
(and when did perseverance fail?) to supply all his deficiencies of
intellect, genius, knowle