felt personally aggrieved when one day we
made over six hundred miles, and the captain told us in triumph that
it was a new record. The ship seemed to be paying off some spite
against me. My mother kept mostly to her cabin. Though constantly in
to see her, I am afraid I did not unduly worry her to join me on the
deck. When just on landing I told her that I had asked a fellow
passenger to become my wife, I am sure had the opportunity arisen she
would have tumbled down the Mauretania's staircase. When she had the
joy of meeting the girl, her equanimity was so far upset as to let an
unaccustomed tear roll down her cheek. That, at least, is one of the
tears which I have cost her which brings no regrets. For she confesses
that it often puzzles her to which of our lives the event has meant
most.

The constant little activities of my life had so filled every hour of
time, and so engrossed my thoughts, that I had never thought to
philosophize on the advisability of marriage, nor stopped to compare
my life with those of my neighbors. There is no virtue in keeping the
Ninth Commandment and not envying your neighbour's condition or goods
when it never enters your head or heart to worry about them; and when
you are getting what you care about no halo is due you for not falling
victim to envy or jealousy of others. I have not been in the habit of
praying for special personal providences like fine weather in my
section of the earth, or for head wind for the schooners so as to give
me a fair wind for my steamer, except so far as one prays for the
recognition of God's good hand in everything.

I can honestly protest that nothing in my life ever came more "out of
the blue" than my marriage; and beyond that I am increasingly certain
each day that it did come out of that blue where God dwells.

I knew neither whence she came nor whither she was going. Indeed, I
only found out when the proposition was really put that I did not even
know her name--for it was down on the passenger list as one of the
daughters of the friends with whom she was travelling. Fortunately it
never entered my head that it mattered. For I doubt if I should have
had the courage to question the chaperon, whose daughter she
presumably was. It certainly was a "poser" to be told, "But you don't
even know my name." Had I not been a bit of a seaman, and often
compelled on the spur of the moment to act first and think
afterwards, what the consequences might have been I c