When You Were a Boy

by Edwin L. Sabin

In addition to the kissing games, and the state of exaltation upon the wheelbarrow, you are able to conjure up yourself in another rôle: at the frozen river’s edge, strapping on her skates—your first remembered gallantry.

Assailed by the shrill scoffings of your rude comrades, under the refining influence of love you kneel before her as she is struggling with a stiff buckle. Like to the manner born, she permits you to assist. Then—then you skated, you and she, for each other’s sake enduring all the pursuing gibes? This point is not clear. You may not further linger with her, the minister’s daughter, your Second Love, for in a hop, skip, and jump you are worshiping at the skirts of the Third Love.

Her eyes are black—large and black. You are desperately smitten. You live, move, and have your being in a very ecstasy of fervor.

Her name is Lillian. Somewhere, somehow, you have run upon the lines of Tennyson:

“Airy, fairy Lilian,

Flitting, fairy Lilian,

When I ask her if she love me,

Clasps her tiny hands above me;

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