the beginning of
my education,--the education, I mean, of real life."

"But let me hear; there's some spice of poetry in it, I know."

"Well, then, it's like many another story of early fancy. In my
childhood I had a playmate. Our fathers' houses stood but a few rods
apart, and the families lived in habits of the closest intimacy. From
my earliest remembrance, the brave little boy, four years older than
I, was my sworn friend and protector; and as we increased in years, an
affection warm and frank as that of brother and sister grew up between
us. A love of nature and of poetry, and a certain earnestness and
enthusiasm of character, which separated us both from other children,
drew us closely together. At fifteen he left us to fit for college at
a distant school, and thenceforward he was at home only for brief
visits, till he was graduated with distinguished honor at the age of
twenty-one. During those six years of separation our relation to each
other had suffered no change. We had corresponded with tolerable
regularity, and I had felt a sister's pride in his talents and
literary honors. When, therefore, he returned home to recruit his
health, which had been seriously impaired by study and confinement, I
welcomed him with great joy, and with all the frankness of former
times.

"Again we read, chatted, and rambled together. I found him unchanged
in character, but improved, cultivated, to a degree which delighted,
almost awed me. When he read our favorite authors with his rich,
musical voice, and descanted on their beauties with discriminating
taste and fervent poetic feeling, a new light fell on the
page. Through his eyes I learned to behold in nature a richness, a
grace, a harmony, a meaning, only vaguely felt before. It was as if I
had just received the key to a mysterious cipher, unlocking deep and
beautiful truths in earth and sea and sky, by which they were invested
with a life and splendor till now unseen. But it was his noble
sentiments, his generous human sympathies, his ardent aspirations
after honorable distinction to be won by toil and self-denial, which
woke my heart as by an electric touch. My own unshaped, half-conscious
aims and aspirations, stirred with life, took wing and soared with his
into the pure upper air. Ah! it was a bright, beautiful dream, Kate,
the life of those few months. I never once thought of love, nor of the
possibility of separation. All flowed so naturally from our life-long
intima