never, never to
be named. It haunted me for many days, and gave rise to curious
wonderings now and then. As I passed the patient, humble beasts of
common experience--a carter's team nodding, jingling its brasses, a
donkey, patient, humble, hobbled in a paddock, dogs sniffing each other,
a cat tucked into a cottage window, I mused doubtfully and often whether
we had touched the threshold of the heart of their mystery. But for the
most part, being constitutionally timid, I was resolute to put the
experience out of mind. When next I chanced to go through the wood there
is no doubt I peered askance to right and left among the trees; but I
took good care not to desert my companions. That which I had seen was
unaccountable, therefore out of bounds. But though I never saw him there
again I have never forgotten him.

HARKNESS'S FANCY

I may have been a precocious child, but I cannot tell within a year or
two how soon it was that I attained manhood. There must have been a
moment of time when I clothed myself in skins, like Adam; when I knew
what this world calls good and evil--by which this world means nothing
more nor less than men and women, and chiefly women, I think. Savage
peoples initiate their young and teach them the taboos of society by
stripes. We allow our issue to gash themselves. By stripes, then, upon
my young flesh, I scored up this lesson for myself. Certain things were
never to be spoken of, certain things never to be looked at in certain
ways, certain things never to be done consciously, or for the pleasure
to be got out of them. One stepped out of childish conventions into
mannish conventions, and did so, certainly, without any instruction from
outside. I remember, for instance, that, as children, it was a rigid
part of our belief that our father was the handsomest man in the
world--handsome was the word. In the same way our mother was by
prerogative the most beautiful woman. If some hero flashed upon our
scene--Garibaldi, Lancelot of the Lake, or another--the greatest praise
we could possibly have given him for beauty, excellence, courage, or
manly worth would have put him second to our father. So also Helen of
Sparta and Beatrice of Florence gave way. That was the law of the
nursery, rigid and never to be questioned until unconsciously I grew out
of it, and becoming a man, put upon me the panoply of manly eyes. I now
accepted it that to kiss my sister was nothing, but that to kiss her
friend would