I was called to the Bar.

My wife's father aided me with his interest, and I started into practice without difficulty and without delay.
For the next twenty years my married life was a scene of happiness and prosperity, on which I now look back with a grateful tenderness that no words of mine can express.

The memory of my wife is busy at my heart while I think of those past times.

The forgotten tears rise in my eyes again, and trouble the course of my pen while it traces these simple lines.
Let me pass rapidly over the one unspeakable misery of my life; let me try to remember now, as I tried to remember then, that she lived to see our only child--our son, who was so good to her, who is still so good to me--grow up to manhood; that her head lay on my bosom when she died; and that the last frail movement of her hand in this world was the movement that brought it closer to her boy's lips.
I bore the blow--with God's help I bore it, and bear it still.

But it struck me away forever from my hold on social life; from the purposes and pursuits, the companions and the pleasures of twenty years, which her presence had sanctioned and made dear to me.