d no
longer risk the resentment or sorrow of her excellent parent. She had no
longer a sister to divide with her the property of the farm, and make
what was sufficient for both, when living together, too little for
either separately. Her youth and simplicity required, beyond most
others, a legal protector, and her happiness was involved in the success
of those hopes which she took no pains to conceal.

As to me, it seemed at first view as if every incident conspired to
determine my choice. Omitting all regard to the happiness of others, my
own interest could not fail to recommend a scheme by which the precious
benefits of competence and independence might be honestly obtained. The
excursions of my fancy had sometimes carried me beyond the bounds
prescribed by my situation, but they were, nevertheless, limited to that
field to which I had once some prospect of acquiring a title. All I
wanted for the basis of my gaudiest and most dazzling structures was a
hundred acres of plough-land and meadow. Here my spirit of improvement,
my zeal to invent and apply new maxims of household luxury and
convenience, new modes and instruments of tillage, new arts connected
with orchard, garden, and cornfield, were supplied with abundant scope.
Though the want of these would not benumb my activity, or take away
content, the possession would confer exquisite and permanent enjoyments.

My thoughts have ever hovered over the images of wife and children with
more delight than over any other images. My fancy was always active on
this theme, and its reveries sufficiently ecstatic and glowing; but,
since my intercourse with this girl, my scattered visions were collected
and concentrated. I had now a form and features before me; a sweet and
melodious voice vibrated in my ear; my soul was filled, as it were, with
her lineaments and gestures, actions and looks. All ideas, possessing
any relation to beauty or sex, appeared to assume this shape. They kept
an immovable place in my mind, they diffused around them an ineffable
complacency. Love is merely of value as a prelude to a more tender,
intimate, and sacred union. Was I not in love? and did I not pant after
the irrevocable bounds, the boundless privileges, of wedlock?

The question which others might ask, I have asked myself:--Was I not in
love? I am really at a loss for an answer. There seemed to be
irresistible weight in the reasons why I should refuse to marry, and
even forbear to foster love