THE TEXAN HUNTRESS. 275 



depict them 'witli an unfaltering hand, for the lessons they 

 shovild convey. 



The rude and hardy sports in which my boyhood, youth 

 and opening manhood had been spent with such devotion, had 

 yet not been sufficiently engrossing to divert or turn aside 

 that morbid revulsion of the passions, which inevitably super- 

 venes upon their first fiery introduction — at this critical period 

 — to reality outside the holiday world of Dreams and Books. 



Indeed, I had scarcely stepped beyond the threshold of 

 the closet, and found myself under the sun, out in the broad 

 world, before the sickness of this spiritual revulsion came over 

 me. I felt the thin wings of the delicate visions I had nur- 

 tm-ed in scholastic shades, wilt and curl up, as I have seen 

 the dew-flower petals beneath a flaming noon. Ah ! a grievous 

 sickness — almost unto death — that was, when I saw those 

 exquisite fraU things all dying. 



They were the creatures of the soul's first spring-time, of 

 softer glowing hues, and breathing fresher odors than ever 

 come again ; and what the sun had spared — when the tink- 

 ling trample of the curt, gray frost went over them — were 

 snapped and strewn — stark in their own beauties — dead ! 

 The glory and the joy passed from the earth with them — a 

 huge desolation spiiming on its poles — I stood upon its wide 

 blank, deaf and bUnd, with one word burning in ghastly light 

 through darkened brain and soul ! — a curse ! It was a pur- 

 pose — it was a savage ecstacy, to live and curse all, — God, 

 woman, man ! to walk through life until I choBe to die, hating 

 and defiant. I laughed hoarsely as I hugged the pleasant 

 madness to my heart. 0, rare and mirthfulest conceit ! Ee- 

 venge. 



Hate ! scorn ! Ha ! ha ! I shouted in my bitterness ; right 

 royal brotherhood for the stout spirit. What a carnival the 

 game of life will be to us — only we wont throw sugar plums. 

 X lie down upon the grass and sob and pule like a tripping 

 Cupid over his crushed flowers ? Manly employment that ! 



