Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/309

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Bachelorhood in Love.
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linked with one who is so thoroughly your counterpart—your completing self? You never dream that the sweet seeming of this temporary similarity may only have been wrought through that delusive magnetism men miscall love.

But when the inspiring excitement of pursuit is over, when the hope of gaining and the fear of losing no longer fan love's flame, when the sober realities of life take the place of rapturous anticipations, when the fancied angel descends from the clouds to which her lover's imagination lifted her, and softly takes her wingless place by his hearthstone, then, fair sister, prepare to see the mask which you resolutely ignored, drop at your feet! Nerve yourself to behold all that is unreal in the past vanish away. Be strong to bear the knowledge, if you have drawn a blank in the great blindfold lottery. Thank God, with a never-slumbering, never-exhausted gratitude if you have received that rare and sumless prize which will make you rich in heart, beyond fear of bankruptcy, during your whole existence.

When you pass from the delicious trance of courtship into the clairvoyant state of matrimony, if the apparent sympathies which existed between you and your lover gradually fade, if the accordant traits mysteriously disappear, if his fervor subside, or evince itself only by a fitful fondness, if his admiration cool, or can only be roused by some unwonted stimulus, if indifference close his eyes to

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