my wildness and my roaming just yet; and still,
seeing that I was, by gentleness of my Quaker mother and by sternness of
my Virginia father, set in the class of gentlemen, I had no wish
dishonorably to engage a woman's heart. Alas, I was not the first to
learn that kissing is a most difficult art to practice!

When one reflects, the matter seems most intricate. Life to the young is
barren without kissing; yet a kiss with too much warmth may mean
overmuch, whereas a kiss with no warmth to it is not worth the pains.
The kiss which comes precisely at the moment when it should, in quite
sufficient warmth and yet not of complicating fervor, working no harm
and but joy to both involved--those kisses, now that one pauses to think
it over, are relatively few.

As for me, I thought it was time for me to be going.

CHAPTER II

THE MEETING OF GORDON ORME

I had enough to do when it came to mounting my horse Satan. Few cared to
ride Satan, since it meant a battle each time he was mounted. He was a
splendid brute, black and clean, with abundant bone in the head and a
brilliant eye--blood all over, that was easy to see. Yet he was a
murderer at heart. I have known him to bite the backbone out of a
yearling pig that came under his manger, and no other horse on our farm
would stand before him a moment when he came on, mouth open and ears
laid back. He would fight man, dog, or devil, and fear was not in him,
nor any real submission. He was no harder to sit than many horses I have
ridden. I have seen Arabians and Barbary horses and English hunters that
would buck-jump now and then. Satan contented himself with rearing high
and whirling sharply, and lunging with a low head; so that to ride him
was a matter of strength as well as skill. The greatest danger was in
coming near his mouth or heels. My father always told me that this horse
was not fit to ride; but since my father rode him--as he would any horse
that offered--nothing would serve me but I must ride Satan also, and so
I made him my private saddler on occasion.

I ought to speak of my father, that very brave and kindly gentleman from
whom I got what daring I ever had, I suppose. He was a clean-cut man,
five-eleven in his stockings, and few men in all that country had a
handsomer body. His shoulders sloped--an excellent configuration for
strength--as a study of no less a man than George Washington will
prove--his arms were round, his skin white as milk, his hair, like