Heroes of the Telegraph

The year was propitious, and, in addition to this friend, Fortune about the same time bestowed a still better gift on Jenkin. On Saturday, February 26, during a four days' leave, he was married to Miss Austin at Northiam, returning to his work the following Tuesday. This was the great event of his life; he was strongly attached to his wife, and his letters reveal a warmth of affection, a chivalry of sentiment, and even a romance of expression, which a casual observer would never have suspected in him. Jenkin seemed to the outside world a man without a heart, and yet we find him saying in the year 1869, 'People may write novels, and other people may write poems, but not a man or woman among them can say how happy a man can be who is desperately in love with his wife after ten years of marriage.' Five weeks before his death he wrote to her, 'Your first letter from Bournemouth gives me heavenly pleasure--for which I thank Heaven and you, too, who are my heaven on earth.'