The evening before we were to leave
Elmwood, I was seated beneath my favorite tree in my mother's garden,
and leaning backward against its grey trunk, with its thick and
wide-spreading canopy of green branches above my head, I indulged in a
long and deep reverie. Memory ran backward over the careless happy days
of my childhood, the struggles of my youth, and the exertions of mature
manhood; and although bereft, at a very early age, of my earthly father,
I could not fail to observe the guiding hand of a Heavenly Father who had
smiled upon my youthful efforts to assist my widowed mother, and had
prospered my undertakings, and crowned my mature years, by giving me,
as a life-partner, the one who had been my first and only choice, and
almost unconsciously to myself, I repeated aloud the following verse from
what was Grandma Adams' favorite psalm: "Commit thy way unto the Lord,
trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to pass."
So busily was my mind occupied that I failed to notice the approach of
my sister Flora, till she seated herself close to my side, and leaning
her head upon my shoulder said in a constrained hesitating voice: "There
is one thing I must tell you, Walter, before you go away: Charley Gray
has told me he loves me, and asks me to be his wife.
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