my teeth as I write. Up the sands, racing forward
like a young colt, came "that child," with her flat flying back by the
strings, and a broken parasol in her hand; up she flew toward Mr. Burke.

"Come here," says she, "I want you to whip that boy out there within an
inch of his life. I broke my parasol over his head, but it wasn't half
enough; I want you to give it to him good."

"But what has he done," says Mr. Burke, no doubt riled to the depths of
his noble heart, as I was.

"Done enough, I should think. He mimicked the way I carried my parasol,
and said some folks wanted to be young ladies before they could
read--that's what he has done," says the creature, flaming out like a
bantam.

"Perhaps we had better go in," says Mr. Burke, lifting himself out of
the sand.

"Not till you've given him hail Columbia," says the creature, taking a
new grip on her broken parasol.

"I rather think he has got that," says Mr. Burke, reaching out his hand
to help me up.

I arose. I jerked that Leghorn flat by the strings, and tied it under
the creature's chin with a pull that made her scream. Then I took Mr.
Burke's arm and mounted the wooden steps, with a feeling at my heart
that is not to be described by mortal pen. What a world of bliss that
wicked little wretch broke in upon. His soul was verging towards mine so
beautifully. The final words were burning on his lips when she rushed
in. Still, memory is left, reason is left. I know what was in that
noble heart, and that knowledge is bliss.

I felt this: I knew his meaning. To a common woman he might have said,
"I love you dearly. I wish above all things to spend my life with you;"
but to a creature made up of sensitive pride and poetic niceties,
unclothed proposals of this kind must be quite out of place. Of course I
understood all that, and felt the refinement of his conduct deeply.

What more _could_ a man say than this? In order to be delicately
personal, one must talk by comparisons. To praise the State one is born
in, is to praise one's self. To seize upon any material thing for a
poetical comparison with a human being, is to be intensely complimentary
to that being.

For the first time in my life I feel the sweet certainty of duplication.
My heart swells with the beautiful faith of hope deferred. Those
heavenly lines we have sung so often together in our meeting-house come
back to my mind--

"To patient faith the prize is sure--"

I dare not go farther and