iliff's daughter, like me,
was an only child; and, like me, she had no playfellows. We met in
our wanderings on the solitary shores of the lake. Beginning by being
inseparable companions, we ripened and developed into true lovers. Our
preliminary courtship concluded, we next proposed (before I returned to
school) to burst into complete maturity by becoming man and wife.

I am not writing in jest. Absurd as it may appear to "sensible people,"
we two children were lovers, if ever there were lovers yet.

We had no pleasures apart from the one all-sufficient pleasure which
we found in each other's society. We objected to the night, because it
parted us. We entreated our parents, on either side, to let us sleep in
the same room. I was angry with my mother, and Mary was disappointed in
her father, when they laughed at us, and wondered what we should want
next. Looking onward, from those days to the days of my manhood, I can
vividly recall such hours of happiness as have fallen to my share. But I
remember no delights of that later time comparable to the exquisite and
enduring pleasure that filled my young being when I walked with Mary in
the woods; when I sailed with Mary in my boat on the lake; when I met
Mary, after the cruel separation of the night, and flew into her open
arms as if we had been parted for months and months together.

What was the attraction that drew us so closely one to the other, at an
age when the sexual sympathies lay dormant in her and in me?

We neither knew nor sought to know. We obeyed the impulse to love one
another, as a bird obeys the impulse to fly.

Let it not be supposed that we possessed any natural gifts, or
advantages which singled us out as differing in a marked way from other
children at our time of life. We possessed nothing of the sort. I had
been called a clever boy at school; but there were thousands of other
boys, at thousands of other schools, who headed their classes and
won their prizes, like me. Personally speaking, I was in no way
remarkable--except for being, in the ordinary phrase, "tall for my age."
On her side, Mary displayed no striking attractions. She was a
fragile child, with mild gray eyes and a pale complexion; singularly
undemonstrative, singularly shy and silent, except when she was alone
with me. Such beauty as she had, in those early days, lay in a certain
artless purity and tenderness of expression, and in the charming
reddish-brown color of her hair, varying