the world. I don't think that I am addicted to jealousy,
but I may not know myself. Possibly I might have felt jealous had I been
eclipsed by a beautiful or gifted woman, but it would be impossible for
me to experience any such emotion on seeing a man with whom I have but a
slight acquaintance, devote himself to a girl whom I should regard as
not only my mental inferior, but also as beneath me morally and socially
as well. The only sensation of which I was cognizant was a disgust
toward the man, and mortification over the mistaken estimate of his
character, that had led me, the day before, to suppose him on a footing
with myself.

As soon as possible after dinner I slipped away for a stroll. The place
was very lovely, and I felt that if I could creep off with Mother
Nature, she would smooth some cross-grained, fretful wrinkles that were
gathering in my mind, and were saddening my soul. So when the folly and
jesting were at their height I dipped into the thicket near at hand, and
dodging here and there, jumping fallen logs, and untangling my way among
the vines which embraced the stern old woods like seductive sirens, I at
last struck a shaded path, which erelong led me down through a ravine to
the waters of the big old lake. It too had dined, but instead of
yielding itself to folly, was taking its siesta. Across its tranquil
bosom the zephyrs played, stirring ripples and tiny eddies, as dreams
may stir lights and shadows on the sleeping face.

I had not walked along the beach, with the waves sighing at my feet, and
whispering all sorts of soothing nothings, for a great distance, before
I began to experience that uncomfortable reaction which sometimes arises
from splitting in two, as it were, standing off at a distance and
looking oneself in the face. I realized that I had been something of a
prig and considerable of a Pharisee. My late discomfort was not caused
by the fact that a young girl had cheapened herself, but by the fact
that a man had demeaned himself and in a manner involved me, inasmuch as
I had been led the day before by a false estimate of his character to
regard him as my social equal. After all it was this last that hurt
most; it was my little self and not my brother about whom I was chiefly
concerned.

I am not naturally sentimental or morbid, so I merely decided that
internally I had made a goose of myself and not shown any surplus of
nobility; and with a little sigh of satisfaction that I had given