loping, unkept lawn,
about midway between the house and the whitewashed gate leading from the
yard, a rabbit hops, aimlessly, his back humped up, and his white tail
showing plainly amid his sombre surroundings. I can see the muscles
about his nostrils twitching, as he stops now and again to nibble at a
withered tuft of grass. A lonely jay flits from one tree to another; a
cardinal speeds by my window, a line of color across a dark background;
and one by one the dry leaves drop noiselessly down, making thicker the
soft covering which Nature is spreading over the breast of Mother Earth.

It may be that I shall not see the resurrection of another spring. Each
winter that has passed for the last few years has grown a little harder
for me, and my breathing becomes difficult in the damp, cold weather.
Perhaps my eyes shall not again behold the glorious flood of light and
color which follows the footsteps of spring; perhaps when the earth is
wrapped once more in its mantle of leaves they shall lie over my breast
as well. For man's years upon this earth are measured in Holy Writ as
threescore and ten, and come December fourth next, I shall have lived my
allotted time. My ways have not all been ways of pleasantness, nor all
my paths peace. But I am glad to have lived; to have known the hopes of
youth and the trials of manhood. To have felt within my soul that
emotion which rules the earth and the universes, and which is Heaven's
undefiled gift to Man. From books I have gained knowledge; from the
lessons of life I have learned wisdom; from love I have found the way
which leads to life eternal.

Old age is treacherous, and it comes to me now that maybe I have delayed
my work too long. For the mind of age does not move with the nimbleness
of a young colt, but rather with the labored efforts of a beast of
burden whose limbs are stiff from a life of toil. But this I know, that
there is a period in my existence which the years cannot dim. I have
lived it over again and again, winter and summer, summer and winter,
here in my quiet country home among the hills. There has been nothing to
my life but that; first, the living of it, and then the memory of it.

It is my love story.

II

In the spring of 1860, I was a lodger in a respectable boarding-house on
Chestnut Street, in Louisville. My father--God rest his soul--had passed
away ten years before, and I was able to live comfortably upon the
income of my modest inheritance,