I laboured hard at my book, without allowing it to interfere with thepunctual discharge of my newspaper duties; and it came out and was verysuccessful. I was not stunned by the praise which sounded in my ears,notwithstanding that I was keenly alive to it, and thought better ofmy own performance, I have little doubt, than anybody else did. It hasalways been in my observation of human nature, that a man who has anygood reason to believe in himself never flourishes himself before thefaces of other people in order that they may believe in him. For thisreason, I retained my modesty in very self-respect; and the more praiseI got, the more I tried to deserve.

It is not my purpose, in this record, though in all other essentialsit is my written memory, to pursue the history of my own fictions. Theyexpress themselves, and I leave them to themselves. When I refer tothem, incidentally, it is only as a part of my progress.

Having some foundation for believing, by this time, that nature andaccident had made me an author, I pursued my vocation with confidence.Without such assurance I should certainly have left it alone, andbestowed my energy on some other endeavour. I should have tried to findout what nature and accident really had made me, and to be that, andnothing else. I had been writing, in the newspaper and elsewhere, soprosperously, that when my new success was achieved, I considered myselfreasonably entitled to escape from the dreary debates. One joyful night,therefore, I noted down the music of the parliamentary bagpipes for thelast time, and I have never heard it since; though I still recognize theold drone in the newspapers, without any substantial variation (except,perhaps, that there is more of it), all the livelong session.

I now write of the time when I had been married, I suppose, about a yearand a half. After several varieties of experiment, we had given up thehousekeeping as a bad job. The house kept itself, and we kept a page.The principal function of this retainer was to quarrel with the cook;in which respect he was a perfect Whittington, without his cat, or theremotest chance of being made Lord Mayor.

He appears to me to have lived in a hail of saucepan-lids. His wholeexistence was a scuffle. He would shriek for help on the most improperoccasions,--as when we had a little dinner-party, or a few friends inthe evening,--and would come tumbling out of the kitchen, with ironmissiles flying after him. We wanted to get rid of him, but he was verymuch attached to us, and wouldn't go. He was a tearful boy, and brokeinto such deplorable lamentations, when a cessation of our connexionwas hinted at, that we were obliged to keep him. He had no mother--noanything in the way of a relative, that I could discover, except asister, who fled to America the moment we had taken him off her hands;and he became quartered on us like a horrible young changeling. He hada lively perception of his own unfortunate state, and was always rubbinghis eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, or stooping to blow his nose onthe extreme corner of a little pocket-handkerchief, which he never wouldtake completely out of his pocket, but always economized and secreted.

This unlucky page, engaged in an evil hour at six pounds ten per annum,was a source of continual trouble to me. I watched him as he grew--andhe grew like scarlet beans--with painful apprehensions of the time whenhe would begin to shave; even of the days when he would be bald or grey.I saw no prospect of ever getting rid of him; and, projecting myselfinto the future, used to think what an inconvenience he would be when hewas an old man.

I never expected anything less, than this unfortunate's manner ofgetting me out of my difficulty. He stole Dora's watch, which, likeeverything else belonging to us, had no particular place of its own;and, converting it into money, spent the produce (he was always aweak-minded boy) in incessantly riding up and down between London andUxbridge outside the coach. He was taken to Bow Street, as well asI remember, on the completion of his fifteenth journey; whenfour-and-sixpence, and a second-hand fife which he couldn't play, werefound upon his person.

The surprise and its consequences would have been much less disagreeableto me if he had not been penitent. But he was very penitent indeed, andin a peculiar way--not in the lump, but by instalments. For example:the day after that on which I was obliged to appear against him, he madecertain revelations touching a hamper in the cellar, which we believedto be full of wine, but which had nothing in it except bottles andcorks. We supposed he had now eased his mind, and told the worst he knewof the cook; but, a day or two afterwards, his conscience sustained anew twinge, and he disclosed how she had a little girl, who, early everymorning, took away our bread; and also how he himself had been subornedto maintain the milkman in coals. In two or three days more, I wasinformed by the authorities of his having led to the discovery ofsirloins of beef among the kitchen-stuff, and sheets in the rag-bag. Alittle while afterwards, he broke out in an entirely new direction, andconfessed to a knowledge of burglarious intentions as to our premises,on the part of the pot-boy, who was immediately taken up. I got to be soashamed of being such a victim, that I would have given him any moneyto hold his tongue, or would have offered a round bribe for his beingpermitted to run away. It was an aggravating circumstance in the casethat he had no idea of this, but conceived that he was making me amendsin every new discovery: not to say, heaping obligations on my head.

At last I ran away myself, whenever I saw an emissary of the policeapproaching with some new intelligence; and lived a stealthy life untilhe was tried and ordered to be transported. Even then he couldn't bequiet, but was always writing us letters; and wanted so much to see Dorabefore he went away, that Dora went to visit him, and fainted when shefound herself inside the iron bars. In short, I had no peace of my lifeuntil he was expatriated, and made (as I afterwards heard) a shepherdof, 'up the country' somewhere; I have no geographical idea where.

All this led me into some serious reflections, and presented ourmistakes in a new aspect; as I could not help communicating to Dora oneevening, in spite of my tenderness for her.

'My love,' said I, 'it is very painful to me to think that our want ofsystem and management, involves not only ourselves (which we have gotused to), but other people.'

'You have been silent for a long time, and now you are going to becross!' said Dora.

'No, my dear, indeed! Let me explain to you what I mean.'

'I think I don't want to know,' said Dora.

'But I want you to know, my love. Put Jip down.'

Dora put his nose to mine, and said 'Boh!' to drive my seriousness away;but, not succeeding, ordered him into his Pagoda, and sat looking atme, with her hands folded, and a most resigned little expression ofcountenance.

'The fact is, my dear,' I began, 'there is contagion in us. We infecteveryone about us.'

I might have gone on in this figurative manner, if Dora's face had notadmonished me that she was wondering with all her might whether I wasgoing to propose any new kind of vaccination, or other medical remedy,for this unwholesome state of ours. Therefore I checked myself, and mademy meaning plainer.

'It is not merely, my pet,' said I, 'that we lose money and comfort, andeven temper sometimes, by not learning to be more careful; but that weincur the serious responsibility of spoiling everyone who comes intoour service, or has any dealings with us. I begin to be afraid that thefault is not entirely on one side, but that these people all turn outill because we don't turn out very well ourselves.'

'Oh, what an accusation,' exclaimed Dora, opening her eyes wide; 'to saythat you ever saw me take gold watches! Oh!'

'My dearest,' I remonstrated, 'don't talk preposterous nonsense! Who hasmade the least allusion to gold watches?'

'You did,' returned Dora. 'You know you did. You said I hadn't turnedout well, and compared me to him.'

'To whom?' I asked.

'To the page,' sobbed Dora. 'Oh, you cruel fellow, to compare youraffectionate wife to a transported page! Why didn't you tell meyour opinion of me before we were married? Why didn't you say,you hard-hearted thing, that you were convinced I was worse than atransported page? Oh, what a dreadful opinion to have of me! Oh, mygoodness!'

'Now, Dora, my love,' I returned, gently trying to remove thehandkerchief she pressed to her eyes, 'this is not only very ridiculousof you, but very wrong. In the first place, it's not true.'

'You always said he was a story-teller,' sobbed Dora. 'And now you saythe same of me! Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do!'

'My darling girl,' I retorted, 'I really must entreat you to bereasonable, and listen to what I did say, and do say. My dear Dora,unless we learn to do our duty to those whom we employ, they will neverlearn to do their duty to us. I am afraid we present opportunities topeople to do wrong, that never ought to be presented. Even if we wereas lax as we are, in all our arrangements, by choice--which we arenot--even if we liked it, and found it agreeable to be so--which wedon't--I am persuaded we should have no right to go on in this way. Weare positively corrupting people. We are bound to think of that. I can'thelp thinking of it, Dora. It is a reflection I am unable to dismiss,and it sometimes makes me very uneasy. There, dear, that's all. Comenow. Don't be foolish!'

Dora would not allow me, for a long time, to remove the handkerchief.She sat sobbing and murmuring behind it, that, if I was uneasy, why hadI ever been married? Why hadn't I said, even the day before we went tochurch, that I knew I should be uneasy, and I would rather not? If Icouldn't bear her, why didn't I send her away to her aunts at Putney, orto Julia Mills in India? Julia would be glad to see her, and would notcall her a transported page; Julia never had called her anything of thesort. In short, Dora was so afflicted, and so afflicted me by beingin that condition, that I felt it was of no use repeating this kind ofeffort, though never so mildly, and I must take some other course.

What other course was left to take? To 'form her mind'? This was acommon phrase of words which had a fair and promising sound, and Iresolved to form Dora's mind.

I began immediately. When Dora was very childish, and I wouldhave infinitely preferred to humour her, I tried to be grave--anddisconcerted her, and myself too. I talked to her on the subjects whichoccupied my thoughts; and I read Shakespeare to her--and fatigued herto the last degree. I accustomed myself to giving her, as it were quitecasually, little scraps of useful information, or sound opinion--and shestarted from them when I let them off, as if they had been crackers.No matter how incidentally or naturally I endeavoured to form my littlewife's mind, I could not help seeing that she always had an instinctiveperception of what I was about, and became a prey to the keenestapprehensions. In particular, it was clear to me, that she thoughtShakespeare a terrible fellow. The formation went on very slowly.

I pressed Traddles into the service without his knowledge; and wheneverhe came to see us, exploded my mines upon him for the edification ofDora at second hand. The amount of practical wisdom I bestowed uponTraddles in this manner was immense, and of the best quality; but ithad no other effect upon Dora than to depress her spirits, and make heralways nervous with the dread that it would be her turn next. I foundmyself in the condition of a schoolmaster, a trap, a pitfall; of alwaysplaying spider to Dora's fly, and always pouncing out of my hole to herinfinite disturbance.

Still, looking forward through this intermediate stage, to the timewhen there should be a perfect sympathy between Dora and me, and when Ishould have 'formed her mind' to my entire satisfaction, I persevered,even for months. Finding at last, however, that, although I had beenall this time a very porcupine or hedgehog, bristling all over withdetermination, I had effected nothing, it began to occur to me thatperhaps Dora's mind was already formed.

On further consideration this appeared so likely, that I abandonedmy scheme, which had had a more promising appearance in words than inaction; resolving henceforth to be satisfied with my child-wife, and totry to change her into nothing else by any process. I was heartily tiredof being sagacious and prudent by myself, and of seeing my darling underrestraint; so I bought a pretty pair of ear-rings for her, and a collarfor Jip, and went home one day to make myself agreeable.

Dora was delighted with the little presents, and kissed me joyfully; butthere was a shadow between us, however slight, and I had made up my mindthat it should not be there. If there must be such a shadow anywhere, Iwould keep it for the future in my own breast.

I sat down by my wife on the sofa, and put the ear-rings in her ears;and then I told her that I feared we had not been quite as good companylately, as we used to be, and that the fault was mine. Which I sincerelyfelt, and which indeed it was.

'The truth is, Dora, my life,' I said; 'I have been trying to be wise.'

'And to make me wise too,' said Dora, timidly. 'Haven't you, Doady?'

I nodded assent to the pretty inquiry of the raised eyebrows, and kissedthe parted lips.

'It's of not a bit of use,' said Dora, shaking her head, until theear-rings rang again. 'You know what a little thing I am, and what Iwanted you to call me from the first. If you can't do so, I am afraidyou'll never like me. Are you sure you don't think, sometimes, it wouldhave been better to have--'

'Done what, my dear?' For she made no effort to proceed.

'Nothing!' said Dora.

'Nothing?' I repeated.

She put her arms round my neck, and laughed, and called herself by herfavourite name of a goose, and hid her face on my shoulder in such aprofusion of curls that it was quite a task to clear them away and seeit.

'Don't I think it would have been better to have done nothing, than tohave tried to form my little wife's mind?' said I, laughing at myself.'Is that the question? Yes, indeed, I do.'

'Is that what you have been trying?' cried Dora. 'Oh what a shockingboy!'

'But I shall never try any more,' said I. 'For I love her dearly as sheis.'

'Without a story--really?' inquired Dora, creeping closer to me.

'Why should I seek to change,' said I, 'what has been so precious to mefor so long! You never can show better than as your own natural self, mysweet Dora; and we'll try no conceited experiments, but go back to ourold way, and be happy.'

'And be happy!' returned Dora. 'Yes! All day! And you won't mind thingsgoing a tiny morsel wrong, sometimes?'

'No, no,' said I. 'We must do the best we can.'

'And you won't tell me, any more, that we make other people bad,' coaxedDora; 'will you? Because you know it's so dreadfully cross!'

'No, no,' said I.

'It's better for me to be stupid than uncomfortable, isn't it?' saidDora.

'Better to be naturally Dora than anything else in the world.'

'In the world! Ah, Doady, it's a large place!'

She shook her head, turned her delighted bright eyes up to mine, kissedme, broke into a merry laugh, and sprang away to put on Jip's newcollar.

So ended my last attempt to make any change in Dora. I had been unhappyin trying it; I could not endure my own solitary wisdom; I could notreconcile it with her former appeal to me as my child-wife. I resolvedto do what I could, in a quiet way, to improve our proceedings myself,but I foresaw that my utmost would be very little, or I must degenerateinto the spider again, and be for ever lying in wait.

And the shadow I have mentioned, that was not to be between us any more,but was to rest wholly on my own heart? How did that fall?

The old unhappy feeling pervaded my life. It was deepened, if it werechanged at all; but it was as undefined as ever, and addressed me likea strain of sorrowful music faintly heard in the night. I loved my wifedearly, and I was happy; but the happiness I had vaguely anticipated,once, was not the happiness I enjoyed, and there was always somethingwanting.

In fulfilment of the compact I have made with myself, to reflect my mindon this paper, I again examine it, closely, and bring its secrets to thelight. What I missed, I still regarded--I always regarded--as somethingthat had been a dream of my youthful fancy; that was incapable ofrealization; that I was now discovering to be so, with some naturalpain, as all men did. But that it would have been better for me if mywife could have helped me more, and shared the many thoughts in which Ihad no partner; and that this might have been; I knew.

Between these two irreconcilable conclusions: the one, that what I feltwas general and unavoidable; the other, that it was particular to me,and might have been different: I balanced curiously, with no distinctsense of their opposition to each other. When I thought of the airydreams of youth that are incapable of realization, I thought of thebetter state preceding manhood that I had outgrown; and then thecontented days with Agnes, in the dear old house, arose before me, likespectres of the dead, that might have some renewal in another world, butnever more could be reanimated here.

Sometimes, the speculation came into my thoughts, What might havehappened, or what would have happened, if Dora and I had never knowneach other? But she was so incorporated with my existence, that itwas the idlest of all fancies, and would soon rise out of my reach andsight, like gossamer floating in the air.

I always loved her. What I am describing, slumbered, and half awoke, andslept again, in the innermost recesses of my mind. There was no evidenceof it in me; I know of no influence it had in anything I said or did. Ibore the weight of all our little cares, and all my projects; Dora heldthe pens; and we both felt that our shares were adjusted as the caserequired. She was truly fond of me, and proud of me; and when Agneswrote a few earnest words in her letters to Dora, of the pride andinterest with which my old friends heard of my growing reputation, andread my book as if they heard me speaking its contents, Dora read themout to me with tears of joy in her bright eyes, and said I was a dearold clever, famous boy.

'The first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart.' Those words ofMrs. Strong's were constantly recurring to me, at this time; were almostalways present to my mind. I awoke with them, often, in the night; Iremember to have even read them, in dreams, inscribed upon the wallsof houses. For I knew, now, that my own heart was undisciplined when itfirst loved Dora; and that if it had been disciplined, it nevercould have felt, when we were married, what it had felt in its secretexperience.

'There can be no disparity in marriage, like unsuitability of mind andpurpose.' Those words I remembered too. I had endeavoured to adaptDora to myself, and found it impracticable. It remained for me to adaptmyself to Dora; to share with her what I could, and be happy; to bearon my own shoulders what I must, and be happy still. This was thediscipline to which I tried to bring my heart, when I began to think.It made my second year much happier than my first; and, what was betterstill, made Dora's life all sunshine.

But, as that year wore on, Dora was not strong. I had hoped that lighterhands than mine would help to mould her character, and that a baby-smileupon her breast might change my child-wife to a woman. It was not to be.The spirit fluttered for a moment on the threshold of its little prison,and, unconscious of captivity, took wing.

'When I can run about again, as I used to do, aunt,' said Dora, 'I shallmake Jip race. He is getting quite slow and lazy.'

'I suspect, my dear,' said my aunt quietly working by her side, 'he hasa worse disorder than that. Age, Dora.'

'Do you think he is old?' said Dora, astonished. 'Oh, how strange itseems that Jip should be old!'

'It's a complaint we are all liable to, Little One, as we get on inlife,' said my aunt, cheerfully; 'I don't feel more free from it than Iused to be, I assure you.'

'But Jip,' said Dora, looking at him with compassion, 'even little Jip!Oh, poor fellow!'

'I dare say he'll last a long time yet, Blossom,' said my aunt, pattingDora on the cheek, as she leaned out of her couch to look at Jip, whoresponded by standing on his hind legs, and baulking himself in variousasthmatic attempts to scramble up by the head and shoulders. 'He musthave a piece of flannel in his house this winter, and I shouldn't wonderif he came out quite fresh again, with the flowers in the spring. Blessthe little dog!' exclaimed my aunt, 'if he had as many lives as a cat,and was on the point of losing 'em all, he'd bark at me with his lastbreath, I believe!'

Dora had helped him up on the sofa; where he really was defying my auntto such a furious extent, that he couldn't keep straight, but barkedhimself sideways. The more my aunt looked at him, the more he reproachedher; for she had lately taken to spectacles, and for some inscrutablereason he considered the glasses personal.

Dora made him lie down by her, with a good deal of persuasion; and whenhe was quiet, drew one of his long ears through and through her hand,repeating thoughtfully, 'Even little Jip! Oh, poor fellow!'

'His lungs are good enough,' said my aunt, gaily, 'and his dislikes arenot at all feeble. He has a good many years before him, no doubt. But ifyou want a dog to race with, Little Blossom, he has lived too well forthat, and I'll give you one.'

'Thank you, aunt,' said Dora, faintly. 'But don't, please!'

'No?' said my aunt, taking off her spectacles.

'I couldn't have any other dog but Jip,' said Dora. 'It would be sounkind to Jip! Besides, I couldn't be such friends with any other dogbut Jip; because he wouldn't have known me before I was married,and wouldn't have barked at Doady when he first came to our house. Icouldn't care for any other dog but Jip, I am afraid, aunt.'

'To be sure!' said my aunt, patting her cheek again. 'You are right.'

'You are not offended,' said Dora. 'Are you?'

'Why, what a sensitive pet it is!' cried my aunt, bending over heraffectionately. 'To think that I could be offended!'

'No, no, I didn't really think so,' returned Dora; 'but I am a littletired, and it made me silly for a moment--I am always a silly littlething, you know, but it made me more silly--to talk about Jip. Hehas known me in all that has happened to me, haven't you, Jip? And Icouldn't bear to slight him, because he was a little altered--could I,Jip?'

Jip nestled closer to his mistress, and lazily licked her hand.

'You are not so old, Jip, are you, that you'll leave your mistress yet?'said Dora. 'We may keep one another company a little longer!'

My pretty Dora! When she came down to dinner on the ensuing Sunday, andwas so glad to see old Traddles (who always dined with us on Sunday), wethought she would be 'running about as she used to do', in a few days.But they said, wait a few days more; and then, wait a few days more; andstill she neither ran nor walked. She looked very pretty, and was verymerry; but the little feet that used to be so nimble when they dancedround Jip, were dull and motionless.

I began to carry her downstairs every morning, and upstairs every night.She would clasp me round the neck and laugh, the while, as if I did itfor a wager. Jip would bark and caper round us, and go on before, andlook back on the landing, breathing short, to see that we were coming.My aunt, the best and most cheerful of nurses, would trudge after us, amoving mass of shawls and pillows. Mr. Dick would not have relinquishedhis post of candle-bearer to anyone alive. Traddles would be often atthe bottom of the staircase, looking on, and taking charge of sportivemessages from Dora to the dearest girl in the world. We made quite a gayprocession of it, and my child-wife was the gayest there.

But, sometimes, when I took her up, and felt that she was lighter inmy arms, a dead blank feeling came upon me, as if I were approachingto some frozen region yet unseen, that numbed my life. I avoided therecognition of this feeling by any name, or by any communing withmyself; until one night, when it was very strong upon me, and my aunthad left her with a parting cry of 'Good night, Little Blossom,' I satdown at my desk alone, and cried to think, Oh what a fatal name it was,and how the blossom withered in its bloom upon the tree!