S. SMITH.
This must be a gossiping chapter, of many persons and many things,
running through many years.
I love to dwell upon the years of youth. They are the sweetest in life;
and these memories constitute most of the happiness of declining life.
Incidents in our pilgrimage awaken the almost forgotten, and then how
many, many memories flit through the mind, and what a melancholy
pleasure fills the soul! We think, and think on, calling this and that
memory up from the grave of forgetfulness, until all the past seems
present, and we live over the bliss of boyhood with a mimic ecstasy of
young life and its gladdening joys.
Like every young man, I suppose, I loved a fair girl with beautiful
blue eyes, and lips so pouting and plump, so ruddy and liquid, that the
words seemed sweetened as they melted away from them; but my love was
unpropitious, and another was preferred to me. I have ever been curious
to know why. Vanity always in my own soul made me greatly the superior
of the favored one, in all particulars. But she did not think so, and
chose as she liked. I saw her but once a bride.
Pages:
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320