ours, therefore, might have been considered
an infected neighborhood, yet I never supposed myself in the slightest
danger, because I had had the disease. Nevertheless, having an abiding
sense of my own ugliness, I should not have ventured into the immediate
presence of the Woods, _except_ on works of necessity and mercy.

The younger sister was taken very ill with the typhus fever. It was
customary, in our village, for the neighbors, in such cases, to be very
helpful. Mother was with them day and night, and, when she could not go
herself, used to send me to see if they wanted anything, for they had no
men-folks.

I seldom saw Jane, and when I did, I never looked at her. I mean, I did
not look her full in the face. It was to her mother that I made all my
offers of assistance.

This habit of shunning the society of all young females, and
particularly of the Wood girls, was by no means occasioned by any fears
in regard to my own safety. Far from it. I considered myself as one set
apart from all mankind,--set apart, and fenced in, by my own personal
disadvantages. The thought of my caring for a girl, or of being cared
for by a girl, never even occurred to me. "Taboo," so far as I was
concerned, was written upon them all. The marriage state I saw from afar
off. Beautiful and bright it looked in the distance, like the Promised
Land to true believers. Some visions I beheld of its beautiful angels
walking in shining robes; strains of its sweet melody were sometimes
wafted across the distance; but I might never enter there. It was no
land of promise to me. A gulf, dark and impassable, lay between. And
beside all this, as I have already intimated, I considered myself out of
danger. My life's lesson had been learned. I knew it by heart. What more
could be expected of me?

But, after all, we can't go right against our natures; and it is not the
nature of man to look upon the youthful and the elderly female exactly
in the same light. The feelings with which they are approached are
essentially different, whether he who approaches be seventeen or
seventy. Thus, in conversing with the old lady Wood, I was quite at
my ease. When the invalid began to get well, I often carried her nice
little messes, which my mother prepared, and was generally lucky enough
to find Mrs. Wood,--for I always went in at the back-door. She asked me,
one day, if I could lend Ellen something to read,--for she was then just
about well enough to amuse herself