The changes in my life were
few and my troubles so small, that memory had scarcely ever to recall
a dark or dreary scene and hope always beckoned me on to the future.
The only events that seemed to stand out, landmarks in the past, were
two deaths in the family--the first my eldest brother and the second
my dearly beloved and much lamented father.
Had it not been for these two events I might drop a veil over all the
past and consider merely that I had lived through such a number of
years:-these years, like the great desert of the east, would stretch
back, an unbroken tract, with no object to break the monotony of the
scene. But, as the kirches tombs or monuments of Arabia, rise up in
solemn grandeur from out the loneliness of the plain, casting their
shadows of the sandy waste, so these two monuments or tombs appear
upon the level scene of my uneventful past. Could I, then, have caught
one glimpse adown the valley of the "Yet to be," what a different
picture would have presented itself to my vision! A confusion of
adventures, a panorama never ending, ever shifting, of an eventful
life.
My second life might be called a period from my wedding day until the
arid of April, 1885. And the third, the last and most eventful life,
is that of three months--April, May and June, 1885. To the second
important period in my career I will consecrate the next chapter and
to the third and final part of my life will be devoted the last
chapter.
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