The engagement had been for some time in this state of contention, when the proposal of going to Turkey as "assistant" put an end to it.
Miss Arethusa retired to her room triumphantly, and exultingly wrote to her lover the facts in the case--except that she left him to infer that she was going to Turkey, as she had always wished, a missionary's wife.
Now that Mr. Freeman Clarke's "blessing had taken its flight," it all at once assumed that brightness of which the poet speaks. He would have argued and urged, even consented to have gone to the ends of the earth, but he saw from his lady's letter it was too late. He solaced himself somewhat by replying to her dolorously, hoping that she might perceive his heart was broken and be sorry. He closed loftily by saying: "You advise me, my dear Arethusa--allow me to call you thus for the last time--to find a heart worthier and better. It was unkind in you to urge upon me an impossibility. None but Napoleon ever scorned the word impossible."
Whether Mr. Freeman Clarke derived his inspiration for the itineracy from his lady-love is not for us to decide; this much is certain: from the day the "Atlantic" sailed for the Old World with Miss Toothaker on board his zeal flagged, and soon gave out altogether. His love for souls settled down upon one Annette Jones, the plain daughter of a plain farmer, whom he married, and lived happily enough with upon a small, rocky farm in the State of Vermont. In times of "revival," he became an "exhorter," and very fervent in prayer. Upon one occasion he soared to such a pitch as to cry out frantically: "O Lord, come down upon us now, come down now through the roof, _and I will pay for the shingles_."[A]
There were two or three people present who thought such an address to the Supreme Being blasphemous and frightful, but the rest of the crowd cried, "Amen."
In due time our missionaries found themselves at the house of Dr. Adams. The doctor was rejoiced to have back Minerva again, for he declared nothing had gone on rightly since her departure.
Although Philip was well pleased with his second wife, he forgot not his first. On the evening of his arrival he went out to visit her grave. As he stood there mournful and silent, a light step approached, and Emily's hand clasped his own.