Page:Letters of Life.djvu/272

260 life's companion arrived, rich in description and philosophical remark, and redolent of the love-spell. I think I have before mentioned, that one element of their attraction was the beauty of their chirography. In later years, while puzzled with deciphering the involutions of fashionable writing, I have earnestly remembered the clearness and symmetry of every separate word and letter, the finished elegance of page after page, even through whole volumes of mercantile accounts, and the decided contrast of the downward and upward marks, which the rigidity of the modern, metallic pen precludes.

Among the pleasant grouping in which imagination indulged, and prominent in all my castle-building, were the three children of my husband. Mrs. Grant, in her "Letters from the Mountains," says, rather flippantly, that "she is partial to ready-made families." The eldest of those to whom I contemplated assuming so important a relation, was a boy of eight years, and the two youngest were daughters. I anticipated much pleasure in promoting their improvement, the habit of teaching having become almost an essential part of my nature, while it was an object of my supplications that I might be permitted to share their affections, and enabled in some measure to supply the unspeakable loss of a departed mother.

After the last visit of my affianced lover, which was to precede our nuptial ceremony, I seemed to attain a