for you
know that I am not without ambition professionally. A chair in one of
the medical schools might tempt me to an Atlantic city."

Constance smiled, as she still rested her hand upon my arm. Then looking
from my face to our little ones, two of whom were playing on the floor,
while the third slept like a vision of innocence in the cradle, she
said:--

"I shall not need the glitter of diamonds--these are my jewels."

Turn your eyes away, good society reader, lest they be offended at sight
of a husband's kiss. Could I do less than breathe my tender love upon
her lips again?

"And richer jewels were never worn in the diadem of a queen," said I.
"As a mother, woman attains her highest glory."

"As wife and mother," Constance answered quickly. And now she leaned
against me, and I drew my arm tenderly around her.

"And all this," she said, "a good society woman must give up; and for
what? God help them in the time of life's bitter trials and painful
experience, which all must endure in some degree!" She spoke with strong
feeling. "On what arm can a woman lean, who has no husband in the true
sense? Is she strong enough, standing alone, for life's great battles?
What has she to sustain her, when all the external support, received
from pride, is swept away? Alas! Alas! Is there a blinder folly than the
pageantry of fashionable society? It is the stage on a grander scale,
glittering, gorgeous, fascinating to the senses--but all a mere
show, back from which the actors retire, each with an individual
consciousness, and the sad words pressing to tremulous lips--'The heart
knoweth its own bitterness.'"

Like ourselves, most of Delia's best friends were disappointed, and when
she returned to New York, no hearts followed her with tender interest,
except those of her own family. She had carried herself with an air
of too much self-consequence; or, if she came down to the level of
old friends and companions, it was with too evident a feeling of
condescension.

I happened to fall into the company of Squire Floyd and Judge Bigelow,
not very long after the return of Delia and her husband to New York.
The conversation turned upon business, and I learned that the Squire had
thought of enlarging his mill, and introducing steam--the water power
being only sufficient for its present productive capacity. Judge
Bigelow was very much interested, I found, in the particular branch of
manufacture in which his neighbor was engaged, and in