so with some natural pain as all men did but that it would have been better for me if my wife could have helped me more and shared the many thoughts in which i had no partner and that this might have been i knew between these two conclusions the one that what i felt was general and the other that it was particular to me and might have been different i balanced curiously with no distinct sense of their opposition to each other when i thought of the airy dreams of youth that are incapable of i thought of the better state preceding manhood that i had and then the contented days with in the dear old house arose before me like of the dead that might have some renewal in another world but never never more could be here sometimes the speculation came into my thoughts what might have happened or what would have happened if and i had never known each other but she was so with my existence that it was the of all fancies and would soon rise out of my reach and sight like floating in the air i always loved her what i am describing and half awoke and slept again in the recesses of my mind there was no evidence of it in me i know of no influence it had in anything i said or did i bore the weight of all our little cares and all my projects held the pens and we both felt that our shares were adjusted as the case required she was truly fond of me and proud of me and when wrote a few earnest words in her letters to of the pride and interest with which my old friends heard of my growing reputation and read my book as if they heard me speaking its contents read them out to me with tears of joy in her bright eyes and said i was a dear old clever famous boy the first mistaken impulse of an heart those words of mrs strong were constantly to me at this time were almost always present to my mind i awoke with them often in the night i remember to have even read them in dreams inscribed upon the walls of houses for i knew now that my own heart was when it first loved and that if it had david been it never could have felt when we were married what it had felt in its secret experience there can be no in marriage like of mind and purpose those words i remembered too i had endeavoured to to myself and found it it remained for me to myself to to share with her what i could and be happy to bear on my own shoulders what i must and be happy still this was the discipline to which i tried to bring my heart when i began to think it made my second year much happier than my first and what was better still made s life all sunshine but as that year wore on was not strong i had hoped that lighter hands than mine would help to mould her character and that a baby smile upon her breast might change my child wife to a woman it was not to be the spirit fluttered for a moment on the threshold of its httle prison and unconscious of took wing when i can run about again as i used to do aunt said i shall make race he is getting quite slow and lazy i suspect my dear said my aunt quietly working by her side he has a worse disorder than that age do you think he is old said astonished oh how strange it seems that should be old it s a complaint we are all liable to little one as we get on in life said my aunt cheerfully i don t feel more free from it than i used to be i assure you but said looking at him with compassion even little oh poor fellow i dare say he ll last a long time yet blossom said my aunt patting on the cheek as she leaned out of her couch to look at who responded by standing on his hind legs and himself in various attempts to scramble up by the head and shoulders he must have a piece of flannel in his house this winter and i shouldn t wonder if he came out quite fresh again with the flowers in the spring bless the little dog exclaimed my aunt if he had as many lives as a cat and was on the point of losing em all he d bark at me with his last breath i believe david had helped him up on the sofa where he really was my aunt to such a furious extent that he couldn t keep straight but himself sideways the more my aunt looked at him the more he reproached her for she had lately taken to spectacles and for some inscrutable reason he considered the glasses personal made him lie down by her with a good deal of persuasion and when he was quiet drew one of his long ears through and through her hand repeating thoughtfully even httle oh poor fell w his lungs are good enough said my aunt gaily and his are not at all feeble he has a good many years before him no doubt but if you want a dog to race with little blossom he has lived too well for that and give you one thank you aunt said faintly but don t please no said my aunt taking off her spectacles i couldn t have any other dog but said it would be so unkind to besides i couldn t be such friends with any other dog but because he wouldn t have known me before i was married and wouldn t have 