* * *

The world goes on and the stories of life are repeated, but to each one
comes that supreme taste of personal joy and rapture that is alone for
itself; that is new, no matter how many times it may have been lived
over.

There was a long, delightful engagement of the young people, who waited
for Allin to take his degree, and his father felt justly proud of his
standing. There was all the reckless happiness of two young people in
that wonderful joyousness of youth when one apes sorrows for the sake of
being comforted, indulges in dainty disagreements so that they can
repent with fascinating sweetness, and are inconsequent, unreasonable,
entrancing, and delightful, and gayety of any kind seems good, so that
it goes hand and hand with love. Primrose danced and laughed through her
April years, and then came May with bloom and more steadiness, and then
peerless, magnificent June.

"I am but a sad trifler, after all," she would say to Madam Wetherill.
"Shall I ever be like my dear mother or have any of the sober Henry
blood in me?"

"Nay," was the answer. "We never find fault with the rose because it
does not bear an ear of corn or a stalk of grain. And yet so great a
thing as an oak tree is content to bear a small acorn."

And while they were being married and rejoicing in Phil's sturdy little
boy and dainty, golden-haired baby girl called Primrose, old
Philadelphia was making rapid strides. Indeed, in Washington's language,
the United Colonies had now "the opportunity to become a respectable
nation," and it came back to the city where it had first uttered its
lusty young cry and protest. In May of 1787, in the old State House,
assembled the delegates who were to frame a Constitution that would
stand the wear and tear of time. Their four months' work has come down
to us written in letters of imperishable glory, that were not to be too
large for the Thirteen Colonies, and large enough for any multiple the
nation might come to use in the course of its existence.

For the tardy treaty of peace had been signed, and though there were
much discussion and various opinions, such as children of one family
often have, it was all settled. And the next Fourth of July had a grand
procession, for the times, and a ship of state was dragged proudly
through the streets on a float, with some pretty boys for midshipmen;
the great judges in their official robes, soldiers, and civilians, and,
side by side, walked Andre