University of Virginia Library

[A letter from Henry Howard, to Charles Lester.]

I know not whether I am sleeping or waking; but it appears to me
that I dream! I told you in my last of the singular compact I had made
with Louise. Yesterday was the day fixed; and I went to her house,
resolved to perform my part, if she still was in earnest, as I thought she
proposed it but in jest. The creature was serious!

She was dressed in the same white robes, and her virgin veil was disposed
so bewitchingly, yet modestly. — Heavens! how beautiful
she was, my friend; a thousand times more lovely than on the first day!

We entered the carriage and reached the church. The clergyman
began to read the service, and when he put to me the question he had
put on the former occasion I answered `Yes' with a smile upon my lips.
When he put the same question to Louise my heart throbed with violence....
I glanced with enamoured eyes upon my beautiful
companion, and the `no' we had prepared beforehand all at once appeared
to me to be a species of blasphemy and culpable sacriledge!—
But I had no time to reflect.

Louise appeared deeply moved, and the clergyman had to repeat the
interrogation.

Louise raised her head, looked him full in the face and responded in
a firm voice:

`Yes.'

We were married?

To tell you what my sensations were at that moment is superior to
my powers. A movement of Louise to hand me a paper caused me to
return to myself. It was a lerter from my father she had just a few
minutes before the hour received, and which decided her to change one
article of our programme in order to save the infirm old gentleman's
life—as she averred!

Uneasy, Louise watched the expression of my face as I finished reading
the letter.... I let drop a tear upon the paper, caught her
hand and pressed it to my lips!..... My wife is divine!

Within a quarter of an hour we were on on our way to the house of
her aunt, and in an hour we started in the cars for Boston to my father!
As soon as he embraces us in his arms he will be cured.

With regard to you, my friends anti-conjugal, you cannot complain
of me; because, if I am married, it has not been my fault. I have been
made a husband by surprise, and in the only thing wherein I fail in my
compact with you is in being very contented with my lot. I have not
been false to celibacy; it is matrimony that has played me a trick!

I am then married!!! You may pity me, my friend, pity me all of
you.... I am the most fortunate of men.