g but this new father, where he came from,
where he had been, why he was here, and why he would not stay. In my
mind I ran over the whole list of fathers I had become acquainted with
in my reading, but I could not classify him. The thought did not cross
my mind that he was different from me, and even if it had, the mystery
would not thereby have been explained; for, notwithstanding my changed
relations with most of my schoolmates, I had only a faint knowledge of
prejudice and no idea at all how it ramified and affected our entire
social organism. I felt, however, that there was something about the
whole affair which had to be hid.

When I arrived, I found that she of the brown eyes had been rehearsing
with my teacher and was on the point of leaving. My teacher, with some
expressions of surprise, asked why I was late, and I stammered out the
first deliberate lie of which I have any recollection. I told him that
when I reached home from school, I found my mother quite sick, and
that I had stayed with her awhile before coming. Then unnecessarily
and gratuitously--to give my words force of conviction, I suppose--I
added: "I don't think she'll be with us very long." In speaking these
words I must have been comical; for I noticed that my teacher, instead
of showing signs of anxiety or sorrow, half hid a smile. But how
little did I know that in that lie I was speaking a prophecy!

She of the brown eyes unpacked her violin, and we went through the
duet several times. I was soon lost to all other thoughts in
the delights of music and love. I saw delights of love without
reservation; for at no time of life is love so pure, so delicious, so
poetic, so romantic, as it is in boyhood. A great deal has been said
about the heart of a girl when she' stands "where the brook and river
meet," but what she feels is negative; more interesting is the heart
of a boy when just at the budding dawn of manhood he stands looking
wide-eyed into the long vistas opening before him; when he first
becomes conscious of the awakening and quickening of strange desires
and unknown powers; when what he sees and feels is still shadowy and
mystical enough to be intangible, and, so, more beautiful; when his
imagination is unsullied, and his faith new and whole--then it is that
love wears a halo. The man who has not loved before he was fourteen
has missed a foretaste of Elysium.

When I reached home, it was quite dark and I found my mother without
a light, si