I care to remember.
Yet I never forgot that I was a gentleman, thank God! And previous years
of study brought me through with some little honor despite my present
carelessness. I had a liberal allowance, and elected to spend my
vacations at Williamsburg or at Norfolk, or coasting up the Chesapeake as
far as Baltimore, and did not once return to Riverview, where I knew I
should get cold welcome. In fact, I was left to do pretty much as I
pleased, my aunt being greatly occupied with the care of the estate, and
doubtless happy to be rid of me so easily. So I entered my eighteenth
year, and the time of my graduation was at hand. And it was then that the
great event happened which changed my whole life by giving me something
to live for.

It was the custom for the first class, the year of its graduation, to
attend the second of the grand assemblies given by the governor while the
House of Burgesses was in session, and we had been looking forward to the
event with no small anticipation. Many of us, myself among the number,
had ordered suits from London for the occasion, and I thought that I
looked uncommon well as I arrayed myself that night before the glass.
Such is the vanity of youth, for I have since been assured many times by
one who saw me that I was a very ordinary looking fellow. Half a dozen of
us, the better to gather courage, went down Duke of Gloucester Street arm
in arm toward the governor's palace with its great lantern alight to
honor the occasion, and mounted the steps together,--our trifling over
our toilets had made us late,--and as we entered the high doorway, did
our best to look as though a great assembly was an every-day event to us.
A moment later, I saw a sight which took my breath away.

It was only a girl of seventeen--but such a girl! Can I describe her as I
close my eyes and see her again before me? No, I cannot trust my pen, nor
would any such description do her justice; for her charm lay not in
beauty only, but in a certain rare, sweet girlishness, which seemed to
form a nimbus round her. Yet was her beauty worth remarking, too; and I
have loved to think that, while others saw that only, I, looking with
more perceptive eyes, saw more truly to her heart. I did not reason all
this out at the first; I only stood and stared at her amazed, until some
one knocking against me brought me to my senses. There were a dozen men
about her, and one of these I saw with delight was Dr. Price, our
registrar at t