could he, or would he, ever forget it? I think not. It was a poem of blue eyes like spring violets, of tender, loving words, of mellow moonlight on the fields where the corn-shocks stood in spectral rows, and the brook they crossed looked like a rippling stream of silver; where the maples along the lane, still clad in yellow foliage, cast mottled shadows in their pathway, and the fallen leaves rustled beneath their feet. They did not talk much—their hearts were too full of love's young dream—although he told her of his visit to a deserted house a year before, and how he heard ghostly footsteps in the house, and saw a closet door swing half open in a shadowy room, and he was sure there was a ghost in that closet; at which Liddy's arm clasped his a little closer. Maybe he enlarged a trifle upon that spook. Almost any boy with a fertile imagination and his sweetheart clinging to his arm, on a moonlit maple lane, with no one near, would. I am sure I would if I were a boy.
When her home was reached he was revolving a serious problem in his mind. To kiss Liddy in the games at the party was easy enough. It was a part of the play, and expected. He had even ventured a few independent ones when she pricked him, and though he got his ears boxed, she didn't seem angry. But to deliberately kiss her now at parting was an entirely different matter. No doubt Liddy knew what he was thinking about, for when the gate was reached she paused and did not enter. She thanked him sweetly for his company home, and declared she had had a delightful time. He assured her he had, and then there was a pause. It was a critical moment. He looked at the moon, high overhead. The man in it—as all men would—seemed to say: "Now's your chance, my boy; kiss her quick!" And yet he hesitated. Then he looked at the near-by brook where the ripples were like dancing silver coin, and then at Liddy. Maybe the laughter of those ripples gave him courage, for he hesitated no longer, but full upon her rosy lips he kissed her. Then he walked home, and all the long mile, though his feet trod the earth, he knew it not. Rather was he floating on ripples of moonlight, with a fairy-like face and tender blue eyes ever hovering over him, and a soft white hand clinging to his arm.
And so ended the boy's first party.
CHAPTER VI.
SERIOUS THOUGHTS.
When the boy reached home a new and surprising change had come to him. For the first time in his life he began to think—and what was more to the point, to faintly see himself as he was, and the picture was not pleasant. He had longed to be a man. He began to feel that he was almost one, and a poorly clad and ignorant one at that. He lay awake nearly all that night, and not only lived the party over, but more especially the walk home with Liddy.
All he had cared for before was boyish sports, to do his work, and escape wearing his best clothes. Now he began to think about those same clothes and how ill they fitted him and how awkward they made him look, and the more he thought about it the more he wondered how Liddy could have been so nice to him. He vowed he would never be seen in public again with them on. He had seen boys in the village who wore neat and well-fitting garments, a starched shirt and collar that buttoned to it, instead of being pinned to the top of a roundabout, as his was, and thinking of them made him ashamed of himself. And then that awful gap between his pants and boots! Then he thought of how the girls were laughing when he came into the room at the party, and now he felt sure they must have been making fun of him, and that made him feel worse than ever. His coarse boots, in comparison with the nice, thin ones worn by some of the other boys there, also haunted him. In short, he took a mental inventory of himself, and the sum total was not pleasing.
All the next day he was glum and thoughtful and for a week he acted the same. It was the birth of the man in him; the step from the happy, care-free boy to young manhood. It was also, be it said, the beginning of a woman's refining influence that has slowly and for countless ages gradually lifted man from savagery to enlightenment. An evolution of good conduct, garb and cleanliness made necessary by woman's favor, and to win her admiration. The cynics call it vanity. So then, must they call the evolution of the species vanity. It may be so, but call it what you will, it's the influence that has wrought the naked savage, decorated with paint and feathers, and courting his wife by knocking her senseless with a club and carrying her to a cave, into the well-dressed, gallant, kindly, thoughtful and refined gentleman of to-day.