many dreams; such as I dare say all have. They
seem such to me now, only not at all shadowy. On the contrary, they become
more and more like reality as my distance from them increases, while their
hues are as well marked and distinct as ever. Many and bright; but the
brightest of all, the dream of my youth, is that which flashes across my
recollection, when there comes into my heart the thought of my cousin
Jane!

My cousin JANE! Her form comes up before me, light and elastic and joyous,
as though summoned for the first time, and as though it had not been my
daily visitor for many a long year. Time writes no wrinkle on thy snowy
brow, my first love! That glad smile knows no weariness, and I know no
weariness in gazing on it. Those deep eyes, full of feeling; those soft
words that thrill; I see and hear and feel them now, as I saw and heard
and felt them first. Wilt thou never be tired of looking up to me, with
that sweet, timid, confiding, tearful glance? Will the rising flush of thy
cheek and thy subdued smile, be always fresh as now, and as in that hour
when first we met? Thou hast been my companion, my unmurmuring,
ever-present, unchanging companion, through many a dark time and stormy
scene; and thou and the heart in which thou livest will die together.

We met, my cousin Jane and I, when she was just putting on womanhood; had
begun to find out the depths of her own heart, to doubt whether those
depths ever could be filled, and to feel that unless they were, life would
be but a blank. Not that there were not many willing enough to love her
and be loved; the beauty of her form and character drew around her a crowd
of admirers. But among them all, her nice perception saw that there was
not one, of whom the exterior did not form by far the largest part of the
man. Her admirers were good, honorable men; she respected and esteemed
them; but still, gentle and timid and humble as she was, without knowing
why, she felt that there was an impassable gulf between her and them.
Their thoughts were not like her thoughts. Her social disposition led her
much into their way, and though she tried to avoid it, she was told more
than once, that the happiness or misery of her devoted lover depended on
her smiles. It was a painful situation for one of her retiring and
benevolent disposition, to be sure; and it is doubtful to which of the
two, the lover or the mistress, every such rejection caused the keenest
pang.

But this was not t