eturning youth, promising us a glorious
leafage in some strange spring-time, and a symmetry and sweetness that
possess us until our thoughts grow skyward like them, and wave and sing
in some sunnier strata of soul-air. In the woods I was a girl again, and
forgot the flow of the hours in their pleasant companionship. I must
have grown tired and sat down by a thicket of pines to rest, though I
have forgotten, and perhaps I had fallen asleep; for suddenly I became
conscious of a sharp report, and a sharper pain in my shoulder, and,
tearing off my cape, I found the blood was flowing from a wound just
below the joint. I remember little more, for a sudden faintness came
over me; but I have an indistinct remembrance of people coming up, of
voices, of being carried home, and of the consternation there, and long
delay in obtaining the surgeon. The pain of an operation brought me
fully to my senses; and when that was over, I was left alone to sleep,
or to think over my situation at leisure. I'm afraid I had but little of
a Christian spirit then. All my plans of labor and pleasure spoiled by
this one piece of carelessness! to call it by the mildest term. All
those nice little fancies that should have grown into real
flesh-and-blood articles for my publisher, hung up to dry and shrivel
without shape or comeliness! The garden, the dairy, the new bit of
carriage-way through the beeches,--my pet scheme,--the new music, the
sewing, all laid upon the shelf for an indefinite time, and I with no
better employment than to watch the wall-paper, and to wonder if it
wasn't almost dinner- or supper-time, or nearly daylight! To be sure, I
knew and thought of all the improving reflections of a sick-room; but it
was much like a mild-spoken person making peace among twenty quarrelsome
ones. You can see him making mouths, but you don't hear a word he says.

A sick mind breeds fever fast in a sick body, and by night I was in a
high fever, and for a day or two knew but little of what went on about
me. One of the first things I heard, when I grew easier, was, that my
neighbor, the sportsman, was waiting below to hear how I was. It was the
younger one whose gun had wounded me; and he had shown great solicitude,
they said, coming several times each day to inquire for me. He brought
some birds to be cooked for me, too,--and came again to bring some
lilies he had gone a mile to fetch, he told the girl. Every day he came
to inquire, or to bring some delicac