Page:Letters of Life.djvu/31

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HOME AND ITS INHABITANTS.
19

throughout his long life, excited with anger, or hearing him utter a hasty or unkind word. Patience, that true courage of virtue, was eminently his own; and at the close of his pilgrimage he was styled, by one well qualified to judge, "the man without an enemy."

After peace and liberty had been vouchsafed to his beloved country, and she had taken her seat among the nations, he married a lovely creature, to whom he had been long affianced. Lydia Howard was his earliest love, but the unsettled state of the land had been unfavorable to "marrying and giving in marriage." Her health, also, was delicate, and they waited, with the hope that it might be more confirmed ere she assumed the responsibilities of a housekeeper. But pulmonary disease in our Northern climate exacts, like the Minotaur, its terrible tribute from the fair and young, defying both the sword of Theseus and the clue of Ariadne. Not a year of life, after her nuptials, was meted out to this gentle being. Just before the thick fall of the rustling leaves, and while the forests were rich with the later tints of autumn, she went to the land that hath no decay, leaning calmly on the Redeemer whom she loved.

The desolated husband passed several years of lonely mourning, and then garnered up his heart in a new trust. Sophia Wentworth was beautiful and attractive, fourteen years younger than himself, and of a family which, though limited in pecuniary resources,