light I was in the dining-room of my parents' house,
which room had always seemed a very vast one to me. At first, I was
quiet, made so, no doubt, by the influence of the environing darkness,
for the lamp was not yet lighted. But as the hour for dinner approached,
a maid-servant came in and threw an armful of small wood into the
fireplace to reanimate the dying fire. Immediately there was a beautiful
bright light, and the leaping flames illuminated everything, and waves
of light spread to the far part of the room where I sat. The flames
danced and leaped with a twining motion ever higher and higher and
more gayly, and the tremulous shadows along the wall ran to their
hiding-places--oh! how quickly I arose overwhelmed with admiration for
I recollect that I had been sitting at the feet of my great-aunt Bertha
(at that time already very old) who half dozed in her chair. We were
near a window through which the gray night filtered; I was seated
upon one of those high, old-fashioned foot-stools with two steps, so
convenient for little children who can from that vantage ground put
their heads in grandmother's or grand-aunt's lap, and wheedle so
effectually.

I arose in ecstasy, and approached the flames; then in the circle of
light which lay upon the carpet I began to walk around and around and to
turn. Ever faster and faster I went, until suddenly I felt an unwonted
elasticity run through my limbs, and in a twinkling I invented a new and
amusing style of motion; it was to push my feet very hard against the
floor, and then to lift them up together suddenly for a half second.
When I fell, up I sprang and recommenced my play. Bang! Bang! With every
increasing noise I went against the floor, and at last I began to feel a
singular but agreeable giddiness in my head. I knew how to jump! I knew
how to run!

I am convinced that that is my earliest distinct recollection of great
joyousness.

"Dear me! What is the matter with the child this evening?" asked my
great-aunt Bertha, with some anxiety. And I hear again the unexpected
sound of her voice.

But I still kept on jumping. Like those tiny foolish moths which of an
evening revolve about the light of a lamp, I went around in the luminous
circle which widened and retracted, ever taking form from the wavering
light of the flames. And I remember all of this so vividly that my eyes
can still see the smallest details of the texture of the carpet which
was the scene of the event. It w