In such mood it is that one
feels grateful to the musty tomes, which at other hours stand like
wonder-making mummies with no warmth and no vitality. Now they grow into
the affections like new-found friends, and gain a hold upon the heart,
and light a fire in the brain, that the years and the mould cannot cover
nor quench.
III.
_College Romance._
In following the mental vagaries of youth, I must not forget the
curvetings and wiltings of the heart.
The black-eyed Jenny, with whom a correspondence at red heat was kept up
for several weeks, is long before this entirely out of your regard,--not
so much by reason of the six months' disparity of age, as from the fact,
communicated quite confidentially by the travelled Nat, that she has had
a desperate flirtation with a handsome midshipman. The conclusion is
natural that she is an inconstant, cruel-hearted creature, with little
appreciation of real worth; and furthermore, that all midshipmen are a
very contemptible--not to say dangerous--set of men. She is consigned to
forgetfulness and neglect; and the late lover has long ago consoled
himself by reading in a spirited way that passage of Childe Harold
commencing,--
"I have not loved the world, nor the world me.
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