r, I remained
with Dr. Harlowe's family during the winter months, while Mrs. Linwood
and Edith returned to the city.

The only novelty of that wintry season was the first correspondence of
my life. Could any thing prove more strikingly my isolated position in
the world than this single fact? It was quite an era in my existence
when I received Mrs. Linwood's and Edith's first letters; and when I
answered them, it seemed to me my heart was flowing out in a gushing
stream of expression, that had long sought vent. I knew they must have
smiled at my exuberance of language, for the young enthusiast always
luxuriates under epistolary influences. I had another correspondent, a
very unexpected one, Richard Clyde, who, sanctioned by Mrs. Linwood,
begged permission to write to me as a _friend_. How could I refuse, when
Mrs. Linwood said it would be a source of intellectual improvement as
well as pleasure? These letters occupied much of my leisure time, and
were escape-pipes to an imagination of the high-pressure kind. My old
love of rhyming, too, rose from the ashes of former humiliation, and I
wove many a garland of poesy, though no one but myself inhaled their
fragrance or admired their bloom.

"As down in the sunless retreats of the ocean,
Sweet flowers are springing no mortal can see,--"

So in the solitude of my chamber, in the loneliness of my heart, in the
breathing stillness of the night, blossomed the moon-born flowers of
poesy, to beautify and gladden my youth.

Thus glided away the last tranquil season of my life. As was one day, so
was the next. Mrs. Harlowe's clock-work virtues, which never run down,
the doctor's agreeable carelessness and imperturbable good-humor, the
exceeding kindness of Mr. Regulus, who grew so gentle, that he almost
seemed melancholy,--all continued the same. In reading, writing,
thinking, feeling, hoping, reaching forward to an uncertain future, the
season of fireside enjoyments and comforts passed,--spring,--summer.
Mrs. Linwood and Edith returned, and I was once more installed in that
charming apartment, amid whose rosy decorations "I seemed," as Edith
said, "a fairy queen." I walked once more in the moon-lighted colonnade,
in the shadow of the granite walls, and felt that I was born to be
there.

One evening as I returned home, I saw Edith coming through the lawn to
meet me, so rapidly that she seemed borne on wings,--her white drapery
fell in such full folds over her crutches i