the unknown.

"Well, I suppose you might call him a cousin for the present. He's going
to marry little Nelly next summer."

In one of Peter Parley's valuable historical works is a description of
an earthquake at Lisbon. "At the first shock the inhabitants rushed into
the streets; the earth yawned at their feet and the houses tottered and
fell on every side." I staggered past the Captain into the street; a
giddiness came over me; the earth yawned at my feet, and the houses
threatened to fall in on every side of me. How distinctly I remember
that momentary sense of confusion when everything in the world seemed
toppling over into ruins.

As I have remarked, my love for Nelly is a thing of the past. I had not
thought of her for years until I sat down to write this chapter, and
yet, now that all is said and done, I shouldn't care particularly to
come across Mrs. Waldron's eldest boy in my afternoon's walk. He must be
fourteen or fifteen years old by this time--the young villain!

Chapter Nineteen--I Become A Blighted Being

When a young boy gets to be an old boy, when the hair is growing
rather thin on the top of the old boy's head, and he has been tamed
sufficiently to take a sort of chastened pleasure in allowing the baby
to play with his watch-seals--when, I say, an old boy has reached this
stage in the journey of life, he is sometimes apt to indulge in sportive
remarks concerning his first love.

Now, though I bless my stars that it wasn't in my power to marry Miss
Nelly, I am not going to deny my boyish regard for her nor laugh at
it. As long as it lasted it was a very sincere and unselfish love, and
rendered me proportionately wretched. I say as long as it lasted, for
one's first love doesn't last forever.

I am ready, however, to laugh at the amusing figure I cut after I had
really ceased to have any deep feeling in the matter. It was then I took
it into my head to be a Blighted Being. This was about two weeks after
the spectral appearance of Mr. Waldron.

For a boy of a naturally vivacious disposition the part of a blighted
being presented difficulties. I had an excellent appetite, I liked
society, I liked out-of-door sports, I was fond of handsome clothes. Now
all these things were incompatible with the doleful character I was to
assume, and I proceeded to cast them from me. I neglected my hair. I
avoided my playmates. I frowned abstractedly. I didn't eat as much as
was good for me. I took lonely wa