I think it is easy for me to be
contented, and to feel at home anywhere. I have the good fortune and the
misfortune to belong to the navy,--that is, my father does,--and my life
has been consequently an unsettled one, except during the years of my
school life, when my friendship with Kate began.

I think I should be happy in any town if I were living there with Kate
Lancaster. I will not praise my friend as I can praise her, or say half
the things I might say honestly. She is so fresh and good and true, and
enjoys life so heartily. She is so child-like, without being childish;
and I do not tell you that she is faultless, but when she makes mistakes
she is sorrier and more ready to hopefully try again than any girl I
know. Perhaps you would like to know something about us, but I am not
writing Kate's biography and my own, only telling you of one summer
which we spent together. Sometimes in Deephaven we were between six and
seven years old, but at other times we have felt irreparably grown-up,
and as if we carried a crushing weight of care and duty. In reality we
are both twenty-four, and it is a pleasant age, though I think next year
is sure to be pleasanter, for we do not mind growing older, since we
have lost nothing that we mourn about, and are gaining so much. I shall
be glad if you learn to know Kate a little in my stories. It is not that
I am fond of her and endow her with imagined virtues and graces; no one
can fail to see how unaffected she is, or not notice her thoughtfulness
and generosity and her delightful fun, which never has a trace of
coarseness or silliness. It was very pleasant having her for one's
companion, for she has an unusual power of winning people's confidence,
and of knowing with surest instinct how to meet them on their own
ground. It is the girl's being so genuinely sympathetic and interested
which makes every one ready to talk to her and be friends with her; just
as the sunshine makes it easy for flowers to grow which the chilly winds
hinder. She is not polite for the sake of seeming polite, but polite for
the sake of being kind, and there is not a particle of what Hugh Miller
justly calls the insolence of condescension about her; she is not
brilliantly talented, yet she does everything in a charming fashion of
her own; she is not profoundly learned, yet she knows much of which many
wise people are ignorant, and while she is a patient scholar in both
little things and great, she is no less a