of the town, and at a good
safe distance, to call them by some insulting name. We never came to
blows, nor ever nearer than a stone's throw. By the natural elective
affinities, which seem to be more marked among boys and girls than among
men and women, I formed the closest intimacy with two brothers about my
own age. They belonged to the leading family among my sister's patrons.
Their father was a wealthy, retired manufacturer who had held every
honor Norwich had to bestow. The boys were indulged in all their wishes,
in every kind of pet animal that walks or flies, a menagerie of small
creatures in cages, ponies for the saddle and dogs to follow. In these I
was allowed to share as if my own, and their house was as much mine as
theirs, more often taking supper in it than at my boarding place. Thus
becoming familiar with and possessing the pleasures which wealth can
furnish a boy, I knew not what a fall I was preparing for myself when
the thread of my destiny should lead me back into its narrow and
tortuous path. How is any one responsible for such passages in his life
which carry him into situations and form in him tastes and propensities
that must be relinquished with much sorrow or maintained with peril? But
the hour of doom was not yet, and my pleasant days had no omen that
their sun would ever set. In truth that sun has never set on the days
when I was in the company and close beside the one girl in my sister's
school with whom I felt the passionless, but none the less ardent
delight. Laugh who will--"Her sweet smile haunts me still." Never was
sweeter or more captivating on the face of a girl or woman, and it was
perpetually there, whether she spoke or only looked in your eyes. By it
I should even now recognize her among a thousand. If I had then known
that souls are reincarnated, I should have known by her smile that she
was the Launa Probana of my earliest awakening. I never played with her,
but I was in the same class; she was at the head of it in spelling
exercises, where, in the then customary manner, we went up when we
mastered a word missed by the pupil below. I was always struggling to
stand next to her, and when I did, I was happy. That is how I learned to
spell so well! I had become diffident with girls and as much more so
with her as I was fond of being with her. Consequently we spoke to each
other but little. To be where she was was enough. Those inclinations and
awkward attentions, which betray the situa