“‘Isabella,’ said a man’s voice, as a large, well-dressed personage assisted her to alight,—‘Isabella, love, you must take a little rest here before we proceed farther.’
“‘I think she had better, sir,’ said a matronly-looking woman, with a plaid cloak and a black bonnet.
“They disappeared within the house, and I was left alone. The bright dream was past: she was there no longer; but in my heart her image lived, and I almost felt she was before me. I thought I heard her voice, I saw her move; my limbs trembled; my hands tingled; I rang the bell, ordered my trunks back again to No. 5, and as I sank upon the sofa, murmured to myself, ‘This is indeed love at first sight.’”
“How devilish sudden it was,” said the skipper.
“Exactly like camp fever,” responded the doctor. “One moment ye are vara well; the next ye are seized wi’ a kind of shivering; then comes a kind of mandering, dandering, travelling a’overness.”
“D—— the camp fever,” interrupted Power.
“Well, as I observed, I fell in love; and here let me take the opportunity of observing that all that we are in the habit of hearing about single or only attachments is mere nonsense. No man is so capable of feeling deeply as he who is in the daily practice of it. Love, like everything else in this world, demands a species of cultivation. The mere tyro in an affair of the heart thinks he has exhausted all its pleasures and pains; but only he who has made it his daily study for years, familiarizing his mind with every phase of the passion, can properly or adequately appreciate it. Thus, the more you love, the better you love; the more frequently has your heart yielded—”
“It’s vara like the mucous membrane,” said the doctor.
“I’ll break your neck with the decanter if you interrupt him again!” exclaimed Power.
“For days I scarcely ever left the house,” resumed Sparks, “watching to catch one glance of the lovely Isabella. My farthest excursion was to the little garden of the inn, where I used to set every imaginable species of snare, in the event of her venturing to walk there. One day I would leave a volume of poetry; another, a copy of Paul and Virginia with a marked page; sometimes my guitar, with a broad, blue ribbon, would hang pensively from a tree,—but, alas! all in vain; she never appeared. At length I took courage to ask the waiter about her. For some minutes he could not comprehend what I meant; but, at last, discovering my object, he cried out, ‘Oh, No. 8, sir; it is No. 8 you mean?’