is the very soul of cheerfulness and comfort. But then peats must be prepared. They do not grow in hedges, nor vegetate in meadows. They must be cut from the black and consolidated moss; and a peculiarly-constructed spade, with a sharp edge and crooked ear, must be made use of for that purpose; and into the field of operation must be brought, at casting-time, the spademen, with their spades; and the barrowmen, and women, boys, and girls, with their barrows; and the breakfast sowans, with their creamy milk, cut and crossed into circles and squares; and the dinner stew, with its sappy potatoes and gusty-onioned mutton fragments; and the rest at noon, with its active sports and feats of agility, and, in particular, with its jumps from the moss-brow into the soft, marshy substance beneath--and _thereby hangs my tale_, which shall be as short and simple as possible.
One of the loveliest visions of my boyhood is Nancy Morrison. She was a year or so older than me; but we went and returned from school together. She was the only daughter of a poor widow woman, who supported herself, in a romantic glen on the skirts of the Queensberry Hills, by bleaching or whitening webs. In those days, the alkalis and acids had not yet superseded the slower progress of whitening green linen by soap-boiling, tramping, and alternate drying in the sun, and wetting with pure running water. Many is the time and oft that Nanny and I have wielded the watering-pan, in this fairy, sunny glen, all day long. Whilst the humble-bee boomed past us, the mavis occupied the thorn-tree, and the mother of Nanny employed herself in some more laborious department of the same process, Nanny and I have set us down on the greensward--_in tenaci gramine_--played at chucks, "head him and cross him," or some such amusement. At school, Nanny had ever a faithful defender and avenger in me; and I have even purloined apples and gooseberries from the castle garden--and all for the love I bore "to my Nanny, oh!"
I know not that any one has rightly described a first love. It is not the love of man and woman, though that be fervent and terrible--it is not the love of mere boy and girlhood, though that be disinterested and engrossing--but it is the love of the period of life which unites the two. "Is there a man whose blood is warm within him" who does not recollect it? Is there a woman who has passed through the novitiate of fifteen, who has not still a distinct impression of the feeling of which I speak. It is not sexual, and yet it can only exist betwixt the sexes. It is the sweetest delusion under which the soul of a created being can pass. It is modest, timid, retiring, bashful; yet, in absence of the adored--in seclusion, in meditation, and in dreams--it is bold, resolute, and determined. There is no plan, no design, no right conception of _cause_; yet the _effect_ is sure and the bliss perfect. Oh, for one hour--one little hour--from the thousands which I have idled, sported, dreamed away in the company of my darling school-companion, Nancy!