The future must decide what the future must be, meanwhile, they were to live in a happy present.
He learned of it, however, before he left his home.

Finding that neither persuasions, threats, nor prayers could move him,--that he would be true to honor and love,--they told him of what they had done; laid bare the whole intensity of their feeling; and putting her on the one side, placing themselves on the other, said, "Choose,--this wife, or those who have loved you for a lifetime.

Cleave to her, and your father disowns you, your mother renounces, your home shuts its doors upon you, never to open.

With the world and its judgment we have nothing to do; that is between it and you; but no judgment of indifferent strangers shall be more severe than ours." A painful position; a cruel alternative; but not for an instant did he hesitate.

Taking the two hands of father and mother into his solitary one, he said,--"Father, I have always found you a gentleman; mother, you have shown all the graces of the Christian character which you profess; yet in this you are supporting the most dishonorable sentiment, the most infidel unbelief, with which the age is shamed.