reached, or passed, the
age of thirty--and I was then thirty-three--experience a milder return
of their adolescent warmth, a kind of fainter second spring, since
the first has not fulfilled its promise. Of course, I wasn't clearly
conscious of this at the time: who is? But I had had my youthful passion
and my tragic disappointment, as you know: I had looked far enough into
what Thackeray used to call the cryptic mysteries to save me from the
Scylla of dissipation, and yet preserved enough of natural nature to
keep me out of the Pharisaic Charybdis. My devotion to my legal studies
had already brought me a mild distinction; the paternal legacy was a
good nest-egg for the incubation of wealth--in short, I was a fair,
respectable "party," desirable to the humbler mammas, and not to be
despised by the haughty exclusives.

The fashionable hotel at the Springs holds three hundred, and it was
packed. I had meant to lounge there for a fortnight and then finish my
holidays at Long Branch; but eighty, at least, out of the three hundred
were young and moved lightly in muslin. With my years and experience
I felt so safe that to walk, talk, or dance with them became simply a
luxury, such as I had never--at least so freely--possessed before. My
name and standing, known to some families, were agreeably exaggerated to
the others, and I enjoyed that supreme satisfaction which a man always
feels when he discovers, or imagines, that he is popular in society.
There is a kind of premonitory apology implied in my saying this, I am
aware. You must remember that I am culprit, and culprit's counsel, at
the same time.

You have never been at Wampsocket? Well, the hills sweep around in
a crescent, on the northern side, and four or five radiating glens,
descending from them, unite just above the village. The central one,
leading to a waterfall (called "Minne-hehe" by the irreverent young
people, because there is so little of it), is the fashionable drive
and promenade; but the second ravine on the left, steep, crooked, and
cumbered with bowlders which have tumbled from somewhere and lodged in
the most extraordinary groupings, became my favorite walk of a morning.
There was a footpath in it, well-trodden at first, but gradually fading
out as it became more like a ladder than a path, and I soon discovered
that no other city feet than mine were likely to scale a certain rough
slope which seemed the end of the ravine. With the aid of the tough
laure