Poor thing! you were right, and
your husband wrong. Woman-like, your judgment was correct, your
impulses good, and your heart in the right place. The child was not to
be blamed, but its parents. You could, if you thought proper, give up
society and live for each other; you had proved it, and knew how
hollow and false it was; but your children could not resign what they
never had, nor ignore feelings which God had implanted within them.
Nature has laws which must and will be obeyed. The swallow selects its
mate, builds its nest, and occupies itself in nurturing its young. The
heart must have something to love, and if it is restricted in its
choice, it will bestow its affections not on what it would approve and
select, but upon what it may chance to find; you are not singular in
your domestic affliction; it is the natural consequence of your
isolation, and I have known it happen over and over again.
"Now, Doctor, let us return, after the lapse of a few years, as I did,
to Epaigwit. I shall never forget the impression it made upon me. It
was about this season of the year I went there to fish, intending to
spend the night in a camp, so as to be ready for the morning sport:
'Why, where am I?' sais I to myself, when I reached the place. 'Why,
surely this ain't Cucumber Lake! where is that beautiful hanging wood,
the temptation in the wilderness that ruined poor Dechamps? gone, not
cleared, but destroyed; not subdued to cultivation, but reduced to
desolation.
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