A well-known American, who wishes his name withheld, writes me of his youth as follows:
"First came the love of emotion and lurid romance reading. My mind was full of adventure, dreams of underground passages, and imprisoned beauties whom I rescued. I wrote a story in red ink, which I never read, but a girl friend did, and called it magnificent. The girl fever, too, made me idealize first one five years older than I, later another three years older, and still later one of my own age. I would have eaten dirt for each of them for a year or two; was extremely gallant and the hero of many romances for two, but all the time so bashful that I scarcely dared speak to one of them, and no schoolmate ever suspected it all. Music also became a craze at fourteen. Before, I had hated lessons, now I was thrilled and would be a musician, despite my parents' protests. I practised the piano furiously; wrote music and copied stacks of it; made a list of several hundred pieces and tunes, including everything musical I knew; would imagine a crowded hall, where I played and swayed with fine airs. The vast assembly applauded and would not let me go, but all the time it was a simple piece and I was a very ordinary player. At fifty years, this is still a relic. I now in hours of fatigue pound the piano and dreamily imagine dazed and enchanted audiences. Then came oratory, and I glowed and thrilled in declaiming Webster's "Reply to Hayne," "Thanatopsis," Byron's "Darkness," Patrick Henry, and best of all "The Maniac," which I spouted in a fervid way wearing a flaming red necktie. I remember a fervid scene with myself on a high solitary hill with a bald summit two miles from home, where I once went because I had been blamed. I tried to sum myself up, inventory my good and bad points. It was Sunday, and I was keyed up to a frenzy of resolve, prayer, idealization of life; all grew all in a jumble. My resolve to go to college was clinched then and there, and that hill will always remain my Pisgah and Moriah, Horeb and Sinai all in one. I paced back and forth in the wind and shouted, 'I will make people know and revere me; I will do something'; and called everything to witness my vow that I never again would visit this spot till all was fulfilled." "Alas!" he says, "I have never been there since. Once, to a summer party who went, I made excuse for not keeping this rendezvous. It was too sacramental. Certainly it was a very deep and never-to-be-forgotten experience there all alone, when something of great moment to me certainly took place in my soul."
