le had roused me. Then after the first
drowsy, dreamy moment I remembered, with overwhelming joy, that I was
at my uncle's in the south; that this was the morning of the first day;
that I had before me the prospect of a whole summer of out-of-door
life and wildest liberty--had August and September, two months that at
present pass as quickly as if they were but two days, but which then
seemed of a fairly respectable duration. With a feeling of rapture,
after I had wholly shaken off my sleep, I came into a full consciousness
of myself and the realities of my life; I felt "joy at my waking."

The preceding winter I had read a story of the Indians of the Great
Lakes, and one thing in it had impressed me so deeply that I always
remembered it: an old Indian chief, whose daughter was pining away
because of her love for a white man, had finally consented to give her
to the alien so that she might once more feel "joy at her waking."

Joy at her waking! Indeed, for some time I had myself noticed that the
moment of waking is always the one in which I had the most distinct and
vivid impression of joy or sorrow; and it is then, at the waking hour,
that one finds it so particularly painful to be without joy; my first
little sorrows and remorses, my anxieties about the future, were the
things that usually obtruded themselves cruelly--however the feeling of
sadness vanished very quickly in those days.

At a later time I had very gloomy and sad awakenings. And there are
times now when I have moments of terrifying clearness of vision during
which I seem to see, if I may so express it, into the depths of life;
it is at such moments that life presents itself to me without those
pleasing mirages that during the day still delude me; during those
moments I appear to have a more vivid realization of the rapid flight
of the years, the crumbling away of all that I endeavor to hold to, I
almost realize the final unimaginable nothingness, I see the bottomless
pit of death, near at hand, no longer in any way disguised.

But that morning I had a joyful awaking, and unable to remain quietly
in bed, I rose immediately. So impatient was I to be out that I scarcely
took time to ask myself where I should begin my first day's round of
visits.

I had all the nooks and corners of the village to see again, the gothic
ramparts and the lovely river; and my uncle's garden to revisit, where
probably, since last year, the rarest butterflies had become domicil