308 WILD SPORTS OF THE WEST 



" If ever the course of love ran smooth, which I 

 sincerely disbelieve, mine was not the one. I shall not 

 attempt a description of the progress of my affaire du 

 coeur ; for I suspect that I was the wooed one, and that 

 Drusilla had marked me for her own, and Marc Antony 

 aided and abetted. He, good, easy gentleman, was 

 formed for Cupid's embassies. He * could interpret 

 between you and your love,* as Hamlet says ; and to 

 one with my sensibilities, his services were worth a 

 Jew's eye. If woman ever possessed the cardinal 

 virtues united, that person was Drusilla. She was what 

 Marc called * the soul of honour ; ' yet she had her 

 weak points, and he hinted darkly that myself had found 

 favour in her sight. As a thing of course, 1 muttered 

 a handsome acknowledgment ; a rejoinder was promptly 

 returned, per same conveyance, as my father would 

 have said — and before six days I was made the happiest 

 of men, and levanted to Gretna with the lady of my 

 love, and formally attended by that fidus Achates, 

 Marc Antony Bodkin. 



" What a whirligig world this is ! I recollect well 

 the evening before the indissoluble knot was tied, when 

 I strolled into the little garden at Newark. My thoughts 

 were ' big with future bliss," and my path of life, as I 

 opined, strewed knee-deep with roses of perennial 

 blossom. I heard voices in the summer-house, — these 

 were my loved one's and her relatives. To use his 

 own parlance, the latter, in the joy of his heart, had taken 

 a sufficiency of wine * to smother a priest ; ' and as the 

 conversation was interesting to the parties, and mine 

 was not the stride of a warrior, my approach was not 

 discovered by either. The conclave, however, had 

 terminated, and though but the parting observation 



