of her age should
be. It was a beautiful summer day when she saw me for the first time. My
nurse had me in her arms, walking back and forward on a balcony with
a low railing, upon which opened the windows of the second story of
my father's house. While the nurse was thus carrying me, Laura came
suddenly upon the balcony. She no sooner saw me than with all the
delighted eagerness of her youthful nature she rushed toward me, and,
catching me from the nurse's arms, began tossing me after the fashion of
young girls who have been so lately playing with dolls that they feel
as if babies were very much of the same nature. The abrupt seizure
frightened me; I sprang from her arms in my terror, and fell over the
railing of the balcony. I should probably enough have been killed on
the spot but for the fact that a low thorn-bush grew just beneath
the balcony, into which I fell and thus had the violence of the shock
broken. But the thorns tore my tender flesh, and I bear to this day
marks of the deep wounds they inflicted.

That dreadful experience is burned deep into my memory. The sudden
apparition of the girl; the sense of being torn away from the
protecting arms around me; the frantic effort to escape; the shriek that
accompanied my fall through what must have seemed unmeasurable space;
the cruel lacerations of the piercing and rending thorns,--all these
fearful impressions blended in one paralyzing terror.

When I was taken up I was thought to be dead. I was perfectly white, and
the physician who first saw me said that no pulse was perceptible. But
after a time consciousness returned; the wounds, though painful, were
none of them dangerous, and the most alarming effects of the accident
passed away. My old nurse cared for me tenderly day and night, and my
father, who had been almost distracted in the first hours which followed
the injury, hoped and believed that no permanent evil results would be
found to result from it. My cousin Laura was of course deeply distressed
to feel that her thoughtlessness had been the cause of so grave an
accident. As soon as I had somewhat recovered she came to see me, very
penitent, very anxious to make me forget the alarm she had caused me,
with all its consequences. I was in the nursery sitting up in my bed,
bandaged, but not in any pain, as it seemed, for I was quiet and to all
appearance in a perfectly natural state of feeling. As Laura came near
me I shrieked and instantly changed color. I p