[Boston—Friday, 15 March 1872]
Friday 15. This evening Robert Collyer and I sat together and he told me a touching story of his life. He was speaking of the unhappiness of married life and how it grew worse sometimes forever in this world. But not always he said. I must tell you! “When we were married, mother was a servant and I but a rough fellow, and we came to this country. We were very poor. My wife bore me seven children and worked and worked, hard from morning till night to take care of them. I in the meantime was at my books. I was chipping out a career for myself little by little. I was growing and was invited to the houses of men in authority, where I had the best advantages and at one time there was a place where we might have parted—not outwardly but inwardly--But I would not have it so. This dear spirit who had given her life for me should never have other than her own place by my side. And so we kept steadfastly on together, and when the children were a little off her hands, she began to read also and now she goes through a book and will help me to understand what is in it!”
All this was said with such infinite tenderness—and then he added “When I am at the judgment seat if any thing like this is brought up against me I shall point to that hour and to that place in the road and shall feel myself to have been strongly in the right and free from condemnation.”
