And John Bold was a man to be loved by a woman; he was himself
affectionate, he was confiding and manly; and that arrogance of
thought, unsustained by first-rate abilities, that attempt at being
better than his neighbours which jarred so painfully on the
feelings of his acquaintances, did not injure him in the estimation
of his wife.

Could she even have admitted that he had a fault, his early death
would have blotted out the memory of it. She wept as for the loss
of the most perfect treasure with which mortal woman had ever been
endowed; for weeks after he was gone the idea of future happiness
in this world was hateful to her; consolation, as it is called, was
insupportable, and tears and sleep were her only relief.

But God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb. She knew that she had
within her the living source of other cares. She knew that there
was to be created for her another subject of weal or woe, of
unutterable joy or despairing sorrow, as God in his mercy might
vouchsafe to her. At first this did not augment her grief! To be
the mother of a poor infant, orphaned before it was born, brought
forth to the sorrows of an ever desolate hearth, nurtured amidst
tears and wailing, and then turned adrift into the world without
the aid of a father's care! There was at first no joy in this.

By degrees, however, her heart became anxious for another object,
and, before its birth, the stranger was expected with all the
eagerness of a longing mother. Just eight months after the father's
death a second John Bold was born, and if the worship of one
creature can be innocent in another, let us hope that the adoration
offered over the cradle of the fatherless infant may not be imputed