and suffered with all a boy's acute susceptibility. I was
intensely sensitive--abashed by a slight, humbled by a glance, and so
easily wounded that there were often times when, seeing myself
forgotten, I could with difficulty drive back the tears that kept rising
to my eyes. On the other hand, I was as easily elated. A kind word, an
encouraging smile, a lingering touch upon my sleeve, was enough at any
time to make me forget all my foregone troubles. How often the mere gift
of a flower sent me home rejoicing! How the tiniest show of preference
set my heart beating! How proud I was if mine was the arm chosen to lead
her to her carriage! How more than happy, if allowed for even one
half-hour in the whole evening to occupy the seat beside her own! To
dangle after her the whole day long--to traverse all Paris on her
errands--to wait upon her pleasure like a slave, and this, too, without
even expecting to be thanked for my devotion, seemed the most natural
thing in the world. She was capricious; but caprice became her. She was
exacting; but her exactions were so coquettish and attractive, that one
would not have wished her more reasonable. She was, at least, ten or
twelve years my senior; but boys proverbially fall in love with women
older than themselves, and this one was in all respects so charming,
that I do not, even now, wonder at my infatuation.

After all, there are few things under heaven more beautiful, or more
touching, than a boy's first love.

Passionate is it as a man's--pure as a woman's--trusting
as a child's--timid, through the very excess of its
unselfishness--chivalrous, as though handed down direct from the days of
old romance--poetical beyond the utterances of the poet. To the
boy-lover, his mistress is only something less than a divinity. He
believes in her truth as in his own; in her purity, as in the sun at
noon. Her practised arts of voice and manner are, in his eyes, the
unstudied graces that spring as naturally from her beauty as the scent
from the flower. Single-hearted himself, it seems impossible that she
whom he adores should trifle with the most sacred sentiment he has ever
known. Conscious of his own devotion, he cannot conceive that his wealth
is poured forth in vain, and that he is but the plaything of her idle
hours. Yet it is so. The boy's first love is almost always misplaced;
seldom rated at its true value; hardly ever productive of anything but
disappointment. Aspirant of the highest m