path I
had taken, until I found myself entangled among the crowds which
thronged Oxford Street.

A scream, echoed by several voices from the crowd, "that the lady would
be crushed to death!" startled me from my unprofitable musings; and
following the direction of the general gaze, I saw that a young female,
in attempting to cross the street, had just fallen between the horses
of two carriages advancing in opposite directions.

It was but the impulse of the moment to dash across the intervening
space, and hinder the young lady from being trampled to death beneath
the horses' hoofs. She fortunately was unconscious of her danger, and
could not by useless screams and struggles frighten the horses, and
frustrate my endeavours to save her.

The coachmen belonging to the vehicles, succeeded in stopping the
horses, and I bore my insensible burden through the crowd to an
apothecary's shop, which happened to be near at hand. The gentleman in
attendance hastened to my assistance. We placed the young lady in a
chair, and he told me to remove her bonnet, while he applied
restoratives to her wrists and temples.

She was exceedingly fair; her rich, black, velvet pelisse, setting off
to great advantage the dazzling whiteness of her skin, and the rich
colouring of her sunny brown hair.

My heart throbbed beneath the lovely head that rested so placidly above
it; and the arm that supported her graceful form, trembled violently.
The glorious ideal of my youthful fancy had assumed a tangible form,
had become a bright reality; and as I looked down upon that calm,
gentle face, I felt that I loved for the first time. A new spirit had
passed into me, I was only alive to the delicious rapture that thrilled
through me.

First passion is instantaneous--electrical. It cannot be described, and
can only be communicated through the same mysterious medium.

People may rave as they like about the absurdity of love at first
sight; but the young and sensitive always love at first sight, and the
love of after-years, however better and more wisely bestowed, is never
able to obliterate from the heart the memory of those sudden and vivid
impressions made upon it by the first electrical shocks of love.

How eagerly I watched the unclosing of those blue eyes; yet, how
timidly I shrunk from their first mild rays.

Blushing, she disengaged herself from my arms, and shaking the long,
sunny ringlets from her face, thanked me with gentle reserve for the