On one occasion, I heard a low,
sweet voice, near his cot, and taking a look, ascertained it was my little
pet, my daughter Lucy, then only thirteen, reading a second time a chapter
that her mother had gone through, only an hour before, with some of her
own remarks. The comments were wanting now, but the voice had the same
gentle earnestness, the same sweet modulations, and the same impressive
distinctness as that of the mother!

Marble lived until we had passed within the Gulf-Stream, dying easily and
without a groan, with all my family, Neb and the first-mate, assembled
near his cot. The only thing that marked his end was a look of singular
significance that he cast on my wife, not a minute before he breathed his
last. There he lay, the mere vestige of the robust hardy seaman I had once
known, a child in physical powers, and about to make the last great
change. Material as were the alterations in the man, from what he had been
when in his pride, I thought the spiritual or intellectual part of his
being was less to be recognised than the bodily. Certainly that look was
full of resignation and hope; and we had reason to believe that this rude
but honest creature was spared long enough to complete the primary object
of his existence.

In obedience to his own earnest request, though sorely against the
feelings of my wife and daughters, I buried the body of my old friend in
the ocean, six days before we made the land.

And now it remains only to speak of Lucy. I have deferred this agreeable
duty to the last, passing over long years that were pregnant with many
changes, in order to conclude with this delightful theme.

The first few years of my married life were years of bliss to me. I lived
under a constant sense of happiness; a happiness that man can derive only
from a union with a woman of whom his reason and principles as much
approve, as his tastes and passion cherish. I do not mean to be
understood that the years which have succeeded were a whit less happy;
for, in a certain sense, they have been more so, and have gone on
increasing in happiness down to the present hour, but because time and use
finally so far accustomed me to this intimate connection with purity,
virtue, female disinterestedness and feminine delicacy, that I should have
missed them, as things incorporated with my very existence, had I been
suddenly deprived of my wife, quite as much as in the first years of my
married life, I enjoyed them as thin