114 THE FOGY DAYS AND NOAV ; 



discreet and skillful action was required that was the very 

 time when my intellectual forces all vanished into the vaguest 

 vagaries, and then too the organs of sound, as well as the mus- 

 cular attachments of my tongue refused absolutely to corres- 

 pond. When I was absent from my sweet parralizer, then, 

 my obstinate vocabulary was prolific of words, and my per- 

 verse tongue most fluent of speech, and often in romatic groves, 

 and under the somberous shades of giant oaks, I have sat with 

 my finger tips rippling in the limped waters of gurgling brooks 

 rehearseing sweet phrases of my own composition.^ until I 

 thought I had them engraven upon my memory, and that I 

 was bravely prepaied tor the next onslaught, but in the pres- 

 ence of those ravishing eyes, all had vanished into a misty 

 dream. To be absent from this adored one, was to me the 

 pangs of death, and my embarassment in her presence, was as 

 a night-horse pressing his horny hoofs upon my smothering 

 bosom, to say simply that I loved her would be an imbeoility 

 of exju-ession — with extacy I would have died for her (provided 

 I could feel assured no other fellow would get- her); I would 

 cheerfully have laid my hypnotized body down on the cold, 

 cold, ground, with her fairy foot upon my neck absolutely 

 content and happy till the crack of doom. What more can I 

 say? 



I had now reached the last stage of desperation, and besought 

 the sympathetic aid of a sweet cousin, and through her 

 friendly manipulation arranged a fishing party especially for 

 this, my contemplated coup. With cruel anxiety I looked 

 forward to that coming day as the most important era of the 

 coming age and fraught with the most momentous results that 

 was to occur on the continent of America. It almost takes 

 my breath after all these years, when my thoughts recur to the 



