their being made in heaven, and what was my father but a divinity? Novels
and poems, indeed, talked about falling in love; but novels and poems
were one thing and life was another. A short time afterwards he
introduced me to a photograph of my predestined, who has a pretty, but an
extremely inanimate, face. After this his health failed rapidly. One
night I was sitting, as I habitually sat for hours, in his dimly-lighted
room, near his bed, to which he had been confined for a week. He had not
spoken for some time, and I supposed he was asleep; but happening to look
at him I saw his eyes wide open, and fixed on me strangely. He was
smiling benignantly, intensely, and in a moment he beckoned to me. Then,
on my going to him--'I feel that I shall not last long,' he said; 'but I
am willing to die when I think how comfortably I have arranged your
future.' He was talking of death, and anything but grief at that moment
was doubtless impious and monstrous; but there came into my heart for the
first time a throbbing sense of being over-governed. I said nothing, and
he thought my silence was all sorrow. 'I shall not live to see you
married,' he went on, 'but since the foundation is laid, that little
signifies; it would be a selfish pleasure, and I have never thought of
myself but in you. To foresee your future, in its main outline, to know
to a certainty that you will be safely domiciled here, with a wife
approved by my judgment, cultivating the moral fruit of which I have sown
the seed--this will content me. But, my son, I wish to clear this bright
vision from the shadow of a doubt. I believe in your docility; I believe
I may trust the salutary force of your respect for my memory. But I must
remember that when I am removed you will stand here alone, face to face
with a hundred nameless temptations to perversity. The fumes of
unrighteous pride may rise into your brain and tempt you, in the interest
of a vulgar theory which it will call your independence, to shatter the
edifice I have so laboriously constructed. So I must ask you for a
promise--the solemn promise you owe my condition.' And he grasped my