ELUCIDATION. 145 



to know what sort of a bird catcher I was, in writing 

 me a letter, so untimely, so indiscreetly, that I almost 

 gave up the chase, the bird, the cage and all, and more. 

 .... Had any body seen me then, when I got the in- 

 timation of that irruption would have thought I was 

 to give up the soul. It was, as if one had taken my 

 heart with a pair of nippers to pull my heart out of 

 my body .... However, I did not give up any thing at 

 all, but notwithstanding my love some one will say 

 that I was not in love, or else I would not have spoken 

 as I did I was in love, I have been, and I am yet, 

 retrospectively and permanently as long as Hive, yet at 

 that moment, I clung to ray dignity, my love despised, 

 call it what you please. . . ,!N". B. I was in Astoria, 

 and she was at Albany. Had we been both present 

 that would have been only a lovers' quarrel, which is 

 a condiment to flavor the thing !!....! wrote a letter 

 two letters. I have them yet, with her answers, also, 

 in which I fulminated, exhausted all the choicest 

 flowers of my rhetoric, to convince her, and I did con- 

 vince her deeply, so deeply that she answered me at 

 once, to come to Albany, that we could never under- 

 stand each other by correspondence, that she could 

 not tell what she felt, by writing, but she would make 

 verbally, a confession that would deserve my absolu- 

 tion without the confession, but that she expected a 

 reciprocity of generosity for her venial sin .... 

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