Walking home through the dimly lighted streets, Loring involuntarily
spoke aloud.

"And this," he said, "is what came out of the magic egg!"

"HIS WIFE'S DECEASED SISTER"

It is now five years since an event occurred which so colored my life,
or rather so changed some of its original colors, that I have thought
it well to write an account of it, deeming that its lessons may be of
advantage to persons whose situations in life are similar to my own.

When I was quite a young man I adopted literature as a profession, and
having passed through the necessary preparatory grades, I found myself,
after a good many years of hard and often unremunerative work, in
possession of what might be called a fair literary practice. My
articles, grave, gay, practical, or fanciful, had come to be considered
with a favor by the editors of the various periodicals for which I
wrote, on which I found in time I could rely with a very comfortable
certainty. My productions created no enthusiasm in the reading public;
they gave me no great reputation or very valuable pecuniary return; but
they were always accepted, and my receipts from them, at the time to
which I have referred, were as regular and reliable as a salary, and
quite sufficient to give me more than a comfortable support.

It was at this time I married. I had been engaged for more than a
year, but had not been willing to assume the support of a wife until I
felt that my pecuniary position was so assured that I could do so with
full satisfaction to my own conscience. There was now no doubt in
regard to this position, either in my mind or in that of my wife. I
worked with great steadiness and regularity, I knew exactly where to
place the productions of my pen, and could calculate, with a fair
degree of accuracy, the sums I should receive for them. We were by no
means rich, but we had enough, and were thoroughly satisfied and
content.

Those of my readers who are married will have no difficulty in
remembering the peculiar ecstasy of the first weeks of their wedded
life. It is then that the flowers of this world bloom brightest; that
its sun is the most genial; that its clouds are the scarcest; that its
fruit is the most delicious; that the air is the most balmy; that its
cigars are of the highest flavor; that the warmth and radiance of early
matrimonial felicity so rarefy the intellectual atmosphere that the
soul mounts higher, and enjoys a wider prospect, than ever