Laura became a
particular person. In Mary Adams's note book she writes with maternal
pride of his fancy for Laura: "It is the only time in Grant's life when
he has looked up instead of down for something to love." And the mother
sets down a communication from Socrates through the planchette to Amos,
declaring that "Love is a sphere center"--a message which doubtless the
fond parents worked into tremendous import for their child. Though a
communication from some anonymous sage called the Peach Blow
Philosopher, who began haunting Amos as a familiar spirit about this
time recorded the oracle, also carefully preserved by Mary in her book
among the prophecies for Grant that, "Carrots, while less fragrant than
roses, are better for the blood." And while the cosmic forces were
wrestling with these problems for Grant and Laura, the children were
tripping down their early teens all innocent of the uproar they were
making among the sages and statesmen and conquerors who flocked about
the planchette board for Amos every night. For Laura, Grant carved tiny
baskets from peach-pits and coffee beans; for her he saved red apples
and candy globes that held in their precious insides gorgeous pictures;
for her he combed his hair and washed his neck; for her he scribbled
verses wherein eyes met skies, and arts met hearts, and beams met dreams
and loves the doves.

The joy of first love that comes in early youth--and always it does come
then, though it is not always confessed--is a gawky and somewhat guilty
joy that spends itself in sighs and blushes and Heaven knows what of
self-discovery. Thus Grant in Laura's autograph album after all his
versifying on the kitchen table could only write "Truly Yours" and leave
her to define the deep significance of the phrase so obviously inverted.
And she in his autograph album could only trust herself--though
naturally being female she was bolder--to the placid depths of "As ever
your friend." Though in lean, hungry-eyed Nathan Perry's book she burst
into glowing words of deathless remembrance and Grant wrote in Emma
Morton's album fervid stanzas wherein "you" rimed with "the wandering
Jew" and "me" with "eternity." At school where the subtle wisdom of
childhood reads many things not writ in books, the names of Grant and
Laura were linked together, in the innocent gossip of that world.

They say that modern thought deems these youthful experiences dangerous
and superfluous; and so probably they will