' And my grandfather Titbottom would lay his hand so tenderly
upon the golden hair of his young bride, that you could fancy him a
devout Parsee, caressing sunbeams.
"There were endless festivities upon occasion of the marriage; and my
grandfather did not go to one of them in his dressing-gown. The gentle
sweetness of his wife melted every heart into love and sympathy. He
was much older than she, without doubt. But age, as he used to say
with a smile of immortal youth, is a matter of feeling, not of years.
"And if, sometimes, as she sat by his side on the piazza, her fancy
looked through her eyes upon that summer sea, and saw a younger lover,
perhaps some one of those graceful and glowing heroes who occupy the
foreground of all young maidens' visions by the sea, yet she could not
find one more generous and gracious, nor fancy one more worthy and
loving than my grandfather Titbottom.
"And if, in the moonlit midnight, while he lay calmly sleeping, she
leaned out of the window, and sank into vague reveries of sweet
possibility, and watched the gleaming path of the moonlight upon the
water, until the dawn glided over it--it was only that mood of
nameless regret and longing, which underlies all human happiness; or
it was the vision of that life of cities and the world, which she had
never seen, but of which she had often read, and which looked very
fair and alluring across the sea, to a girlish imagination, which knew
that it should never see that reality.
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