When my wife died, three years
ago, her sister Polly offered to keep house for me and the child. I
would sooner have had the devil in the house, and yet I trembled with
alarm,--there seemed no way of escape,--it was so clearly and obviously
the proper thing.
But she herself gave me my opportunity. I was on the point of
consenting, when she demanded, as a condition of her coming, that I
discharge Julia, my late wife's maid. She was laboring under a
misapprehension in regard to the girl, but I grasped at the straw, and
did everything to foster her delusion. I declared solemnly that nothing
under heaven would induce me to part with Julia. The controversy
resulted in my permitting Polly to take the child, while I retained the
maid.
Before Polly put this idea into my head, I had scarcely looked at Julia,
but this outbreak turned my attention toward her. She was a handsome
girl, and, as I soon found out, a good girl. My wife, who raised her,
was a Christian woman, and had taught her modesty and virtue. She was
free. The air was full of liberty, and equal rights, and all the
abolition claptrap, and she made marriage a condition of her remaining
longer in the house. In a moment of weakness I took her away to a place
where we were not known, and married her. If she had left me, I should
have fallen a victim to Polly Ochiltree,--to which any fate was
preferable.
And then, old friend, my weakness kept to the fore. I was ashamed of
this marriage, and my new wife saw it.
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