Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/286

Rh St. Matthew. And we soon found ourselves, to our great satisfaction, sweeping along the Attamahah river, whose waters here in the neighbourhood of the sea are salt, and seemed in the evening twilight like a river of brightly-flowing silver, full of sparkling diamonds.

St. Matthew had already many passengers on board; and among them were three pair of turtle-doves of the human race. The first pair, physically handsome but second-class people in cultivation and manners, were so in love with one another, and showed it to such a degree that it was quite disgusting; the young man, with a huge breast-pin of sham diamonds in his shirt frill, confessed to an acquaintance in the company that he considered himself to have married the most perfect woman in the world. But her perfectly handsome person did not appear to me to entertain much soul within it. Turtle-doves No. 2, were of a more refined character altogether, agreeable people, with the loving soul beaming from dark and beautiful eyes; she, very delicate in health, after only one year's marriage; he, very anxious about her. Turtle-doves No. 3, were neither of them any longer young or handsome, but they were of all the three pair the most interesting and perhaps the most happy. It did one good to see them and to hear their history.

They belonged to the poorer class of white people, of Carolina and Georgia, living in the most sandy and sterile part of the country, without schools or any means of education. She married her husband without the consent of her relatives, and when some time after their marriage they fell into great poverty through some fault of her husband, her relatives gave her a home on the strict condition that she should never again see him. He, extremely angry at this prohibition, swore that they should never see him again until he came to fetch away his wife to her own home. He went away, and not a word was heard of him for seven years. She remained